BombayCurry

Today 5 pm, Colaba: Disgusted with Scams? Time to Reclaim your Citizenship!

2010-11-20T13:22:00.001+05:30

CWG, Lavasa, 2G spectrum, mining contracts, Adarsh… The skeletons keep tumbling out with mind-numbing regularity, and each delivers the same message: Eternal vigilance is the price that we citizens must pay for freedom… or else! If we remain passive spectators, we will lose our collective self respect and wealth. So the buck literally stops with ‘We the People’.

Too often in the past, we citizens failed to participate in governance. We left it all to politicians and bureaucrats while we withdrew into our comfortable private worlds. The results of our collective neglect are now all around us, too squalid to ignore.

Mr. & Ms. Citizen, isn’t it high time we dusted off our 60-year-old contract with the State, called the Constitution? Isn’t it time we re-looked at the meaning of our fundamental rights and fundamental duties? Isn’t it high time that we invested some energy and resources into enforcing our rights and delivering on our duties?

Isn’t it time we stopped nervously watching from the sidelines, and stepped into the centre-stage of non-electoral politics and governance reforms?

Come, Rediscover your Constitution, Reclaim your Citizenship. We invite you to participate in our forthcoming meeting.

Date & time: 20 November, 5 to 7.30 pm

Venue: Maharashtra State Lawn Tennis Association (MSLTA),

Cooperage, Near Oval Maidan, Colaba

Landmark: Gate opposite PVM Gymkhana on the road that comes straight from Churchgate

RSVP & Enquiries: Krish 98215 88114

The Constitution is the blueprint of India’s democracy. Although 60 years have passed since it was painstakingly drafted and enacted, few of us ever laid hands on it. We remain unaware of the role that it plays in our daily lives and the strength it can provide to our struggles against bad governance. Come, let us look at some landmark cases that the Constitution helped people win… and how these have changed the way we live. Let us look at the essential tools that we can use in challenging and changing the way in which we are governed.

Come. Let’s review some of our own beliefs as citizens that have contributed to the squalid reality around us. And then let’s move towards creating a new reality.

NOTES:

This is part of a series of interactions in Mumbai and other cities being held every month until 26 January, 2011. The series is anchored by Vinita Singh and Krishnaraj Rao. Vinita has been working in the area of social development for 16 years, largely among the urban and rural poor. Krishnaraj is a professional journalist, publisher and campaigner for proper implementation of Right to Information and other crucial rights & duties of citizens.
This meeting at Colaba is organized with support from Kishore Jagtiani & 3rd – 4th Pasta Lane Residents’ Association, Kunti Oza & Oval Cooperage Residents’ Association (OCRA), Colaba ALM (CALM) & Cuffe Parade Residents Association.

Disgusted with negative Commonwealth Games news coverage

2010-09-22T18:49:00.007+05:30

Unfortunately the quality of jounalism in India tends to be oversensationalised and non analytical, with Bennet Coleman at the top of the trash heap. TimesNews, Times of India, Economic Times are virtually rags, constantly reporting highly sensationalised and mostly negative stories...notice how TimesNow has Saas Bahu (notorious afternoon soap on the battle between daughter and mother in laws, watched by stay at home daughter and mother in laws!) type editing and effects with the camera doing triple repeat zoom ins of the same spot with suitable "slashing" sounds to create a sensationalized effect. As these are pretty popular news media across India, the trash tends to be picked up and redistributed by people socially, cause India bashing are topics that get the reactions.

I had the good fortune of visiting the games village 6 weeks back. It is extremely well built and very beautiful (yes its the one above), with lovely gardens, nice architecture, very nice finishing, lcd tvs in each apartment, gorgeous bathrooms, superb fitness center, pool, etc (it will be sold as premium residential apartments after the games and if you are looking for property in Delhi it is highly recommended). It is built by an international firm, Emmar, the same people responsible for many of the beautiful buildings in Dubai (including the worlds tallest one). Check it out here http://www.emaarmgf.com/CGV/index.asp

The foot-bridge that collapsed was also being built by an A list contractor...

Today the Times (website) is screaming the headline "Roof Collapses", when you read the story it turns out a small part of a false ceiling came down due to heavy cables...

Go figure!

The Age of the Aggregator

2010-09-15T17:07:00.004+05:30

Hi, so I haven't blogged for many months now, thanks to Twitter, but I wanted to write a little longer one so here I am!

Have you noticed the Aggregator phenomena that's sweeping the world? An Aggregator is a service that complies the products/service of many brands and provides them to customers in a single place. The Aggregators come into place when there are multiple brands which are very similar to each other, and of virtually equal quality, thus the customer does not mind choosing between them. Instead the customer goes to single source where they are available. In New York the department stores are the aggregators with Bloomingdales, Barney's, etc ruling the fashion scene, with designers groveling to their every demand. In the Internet era it is the topical "portals" which are the Aggregators.

In the early 2000s we saw Google and Amazon both of which are Aggregators:

Google, aggregates and organises data from the web and help your find the most relevant one. Thus you do not have to remember countless website names and URLs, just the subject you are searching for and you get to browse countless websites. A highly illustrated version of Google as an Aggregator is Google News, it aggregates news from thousands of news papers and blogs and organises them topically for you. Now you don't need to remember the news source, you just goto goto Google News and all the news you need is there. Infact it's better going to Google News than a single newssource such as CNN or BBC as there you may not get the very latest and diverse coverage available.

Amazon, aggregates 1000s (millions?) of products brands in a single portal and organises them by topic for the customer's convenience. Why goto the websites of individual brands when here you can get choice, choice, choice.

Then we also saw aggregators for travel, Exedia, Travelocity, etc. Go there and get not only a multiple choice for your flights and hotels, but also pick the best deals!

Off late we have Gilt Groupe and Groupon, both of which are aggregators of newer categories

Gilt, organises high end fashion and lifestyle brands and presents them in the form of 3 days sales to consumers. They are the Barneys and Bloomies of the Internet; why goto individual stores or designers when I can buy them in a single place?

Groupon, organises deals from around the city and presents a deal of the day to its users.

Closer home in India, we have seen the successful IPO of MakeMyTrip a travel aggregator. And we are now seeing the rapid growth of Gropupon and Gilt clones.

Aggregators have moved to the top of the value chain because they are the ones which have the relationship with the customer. The customer is no longer loyal to a brand, such as Malaysian Airlines, but the aggregator (the travelsite in the case) where he shops multiple brands and products. God has decreed that whomsoever shall have the relationship with the customer shall have the largest share of the value chain!

A new but lessor known aggregator is the Venture Capitalist. While not having a relationship with the customer he is on the opposite side, aggregating multiple investors. Instead of starting businesses he cherry picks investments, aggregating a portfolio of companies, present in virtually every sector.

No longer is the inventor, the manager, the entrepreneur and the conglomerate the aristocracy of the working world. The aggregators at both ends, one on the customer side who aggregates both customers and brands and is the vital link between them; and on the other side the one who aggregates the money and is the vital link between the money and the businesses, the new emperors, with the rest relegated to the working class.

When the law leaves India

2010-03-07T15:30:00.002+05:30

The images above are the infamous MF Hussain Paintings, which led to Hussain's home being attacked in 1998, his shows in India vandalized and 1250 court cases filed against him. The paintings were created in 1970, but came to controversy in 1996, when an Indian magazine published them.

Subsequently Hussain fled India and lived in Dubai, where he continued to work and prosper, owning by some reports multiple Mercs and Ferraris, which is believable as a recent work of his sold at Christie's for $1.6M. Then 2 weeks back came the stunning news that Hussain has given up his Indian nationality for the nationality of Qatar (great PR coup by Qatar).

So why does an Indian citizen have to flee just because he has raised a controversy?

Today in the papers there is a report that the Andhra Pradesh High Court will take 320 years to clear pending cases! With this kind of break down in the system of justice, people can easily take the law into their own hands, attack anyone or create harassment, with no fear of being pulled up by the courts. The story is the same across India, the law and order mechanism is in shambles: if you goto court it takes forever to get justice, if you goto the police station, it is virtually impossible to register your complaint (FIR).

In Mumbai we constantly see political parties hold the city to ransom, you dare say something that is not to their liking, and they will attack your house; and if you are a movie star that will attack the movie halls when your movie is showing causing you financial losses. The courts are helpless (probably takes 10 years for your case to be decided), so the only thing you can do is stare them down, which recently Shah Rukh Khan did and the bullies retreat with their tale between their legs. But that is not how civilised society can function.

Successive government upon government has not done much to improve the delivery of justice, neither have the powerful industrial lobbies done much to push the cause of fast justice delivery. So while on one side India has a year on year growth rate of 7%, on the other, the gap with the justice system keeps widening. Its already at proportions where justice is non-existent as we can see from Hussain having to give up his Indian nationality.

I pray and hope the Indian government, industrial houses and citizen groups awaken to the importance of a fast and effective system of courts. This is the single biggest threat presently facing our country.

Meru Cabs from Airport: the best ride

2010-01-19T01:37:00.002+05:30

Here is a tip: when arriving at Bombay Airport, looking for a sign that says "Fleet Taxis" near the "Pre-Paid Taxi" counter, both at international and domestic arrivals. Under Fleet Taxis sign there will be a few black phones, just pick up any of your choice, my preference is Meru Cabs, and get yourself a smooth ride to your destination.

This is such a relief, because though Bombay's 1960 "Fiat" taxis are charming, they are rickety and way past retirement. Modern taxi services like Meru, Mega, Dot Cabs, Forshe (only for women) bring the much need high quality service and comfort missing from Bombay till a year back.

If you want to book these taxis for hopping around the city, you can do that do, just Google their names to get their phone numbers.

Enjoy!!!

The Angel Investing Drought in India?

2009-12-23T00:32:00.003+05:30

I attended the Angel Connect breakfast meet today (on the sidelines of the TIE Summit Mumbai), organised by Alok Mittal and team from Cannan Partners (VC guys); where the lead topic of discussion seemed to be "why is their such a drought of Angel Investing in India? The big parallel drawn was with the US, where VC investments last year were apparently $30B and Angel investments were a close 2nd at $26B; and apparently in India, Angel investments are way behind VC investments.

Most people at the meet agreed that Angel Investments are chiefly in businesses that VCs are likely to fund once the model is proven. This is logical because Angels cannot write large enough cheques to carry a business all the way to sale or IPO, thus will need VCs to step in with big cheques after 4 - 8 quarters. Thus one limitation as to what businesses are being funded by Angels is the kind of sectors VC find hot.

Another agreement seemed to be that, since Angels need to spend lots of time on with their investee startup, they like the business to be local; thus Angel activity in India is chiefly restricted to business HQ in Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore.

Surprisingly some Angels differed on the fact that only business that have an exit potential need to be funded by Angel Capital. Some Angels at the meet said they fund businesses that can give them healthy dividends ! I found that quite strange and didn't make sense to me.

From my own experience, Angel investing is growing by leaps and bounds in India, at over 300% a year, with more and more projects Angel invested each year. At Indian Angel Network, since 2006 we have done 19 investments, with 10 of those coming in 2009! At this rate in about 8 years we should see Angel investments reach a very sizeable number, possibly equaling VC investments.

Chrome for Mac - Advantage India

2009-12-16T14:45:00.002+05:30

With the release of Chrome for Mac the fun of having yet another bowser for yet another operating system enhances by one more level. So now we have:

Mac: Safari, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Firefox 3.5 and Chrome

Windows: IE6, IE7, IE8, Safari, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Firefox 3.5, Chrome

Linux: Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Firefox 3.5, Chrome

Each or these browsers run their own Javascript engines which tend to behave a little differently on each OS, giving way to virtually infinite permutations and combinations. Which means that each time you make a release to your website, 1000s of hours have to go into testing each the minutest of Javascript functionality and tweaking it to make it work across browsers.

This testing largely being a manual effort, it's becoming increasingly expensive to produce web applications in the US and Europe. Which is why it makes sense to setup shop in India to develop your software.

Yesterday I was at IIT Bombay's IDC, where IDEO Design of San Francisco was recruiting. The big news was that they are opening an office in Bombay ! Which makes complete sense looking at how cost efficient it is to produce web applications in India.

Who do I vote for on 13th Oct?

2009-10-03T18:37:00.003+05:30

I have always been zealous about participating in public life, rallied on by Plato "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men". However, next week on the 13th of October, when I go to elect my state representative, I am devoid of choices. I have to choose between Sachin Ahir of the NCP, who has 5 criminal cases pending against him and Ashish Chemburkur of the Shiv Sena, who is an existing BMC corporator, where he has the track record of of running one of the cities filthiest localities!

But atleast I am informed and while I can fret about the lack of a suitable candidate, unlike the 2004 elections, I can now understand my candidates better, get details of their public records and also upcoming promises. I can even dive into their part manifestos.

All this thanks to MumbaiVotes.com a non profit project dedicated to providing indepth information on each candidate. If you live in Mumbai, and are voting on the 13th of October, please 1st visit MumbaiVotes.com to get a detailed synopsis and video interviews on each candidate.

Jet Airways: An insensitive strike

2009-09-13T18:34:00.003+05:30

As we enter the 6th day of Jet Airways flight disruptions, an airline that prides itself on quality, I can't help but feel a disgust for the pilots that brought this about. Drawing an average of Rs. 600,000 a month ($15,000/month), amongst the highest paid of Indians (where are national per capital annual income average is around Rs. 150,000), these pilots have already caused over $20M in direct losses to the airline, not to mention the Millions more in losses by way of tarnished reputation, and treemdous losses and inconvenience to the passengers of the 1000+ canceled flights.

What makes the strike worse is that global aviation, Indian included, is going through an extremely rough patch, with each airline racking up millions of Dollars in losses. Jet Airways to has been losing money all of last year. Instead of working shoulder to shoulder with the airline management, these pilots can only think of their own agenda. Selfish.

Management books have pages full talking about the need of management to communicate their position to employees. But how many employees make an effort to understand the management position? There has always been way too much focus on management trying to communicate its position to employees, but very little on employees trying to understand management.

And what is the use of unions in India? The newspapers are full of stories of corrupt union leaders who lead unions as a way to gain personally. A recent story on Pervez Pestonji Saher, a senior laundry operator, showed how he is amongst the Taj Hotels highest paid employees, at Rs. 1.5 cr a year ($300,000/year), just because he is the leader of the hotel's union. In the past there have been stories on how famous union leader Datta Samant amassed a huge amount of wealth and power due to his position.

Instead of forming unions, people should try and better understand the company they are a part off. The reaslisation that there is no master and no workers, just a team, trying to make ends meet for everyone, is the key.

Frustrated with FireFox

2009-08-02T02:29:00.003+05:30

Firefox is turning out to be the new headache in town.

On our site Remindo, FF 3.1 does not render pages fast, when all other browsers including IE, Safari and Chrome do so. The problem appears to be that because our site is fully HTTPs, it 1st loads the entire page and then outputs it! Instead of outputting the page in small chunks. Users thus are left staring at a blank screen for a few seconds before the page appears.

With new versions 3.5, 3.5.1 and 3.5.2 this problem has been solved, and the page outputs in chunks, like it should, but a new even more serious problem has been introduced. It seems that 3.5, 3.5.1 and 3.5.2 are using a new Javascript Engine, Tracemonkey, which causes the page to freeze and keystrokes miss if your page is running a HTTP bind operation. Our page runs an HTTP bind every 4 seconds because of the Instant Messaging feature. This creates great difficulty for the user in keying in anything.

Not just Remindo, every site is negatively affected by FF 3.5, 3.5.1 and 3.5.2, when you open a page and its downloading, while you can see it page, the page scroll locks, so one has to wait for the whole page to load before one can scroll though the page.

These are shocking usability issues, but Mozilla Corporation is bent on stonewalling the issue. They refuse to acknowledge these as bugs, and keep asking users to disable add ons. Well I have disabled all my addons and there is no improvement!

For a browser that has as much as 30% marketshare, this is pathetic! Mozilla Corporation in the hurry to outdo Chrome and other browsers seem to have slipped up on the basics!

Update: Techcruch also blogs the issue: Earlier in the week Techcruch reported that FF 3.5 was not playing well with Twitter and other sites. Many comments chipped in with similar woes http://tcrn.ch/6RWd

Why Obama wants to split Pakistan

2009-07-26T15:39:00.002+05:30

When this classified US map leaked last year, showing Baluchistan as a separate country, it created an uproar in Pakistan. Rightly so, because no nation would want see a large part of itself carved out into a separate country.

Yet, it is the consistent foreign policy of superpowers to carve up countries in smaller multiple countries, so as to keep them under control and weak.

Under the Clinton administration, Yugoslavia was carved up into 3 countries: Coratia, Serbia and Montenegro.

Under the next Presidency, the Bush administration, Iraq was carved up into 3 autonomous regions, Basra, Kurdistan and Central Iraq

Now under the Obama administration we are likely to see Pakistan carved up into 2 countries, or at the very least 2 autonomous regions: Baluchistan and Pakistan.

But wait, isn't the US Pakistan's ally, giving it millions of dollars of aid every year? Yes it is.

But Pakistan's sin appears to be its growing proximity to China:

- Hu Jintao has described relations with Pakistan as "higher than the mountains and deeper than the oceans"

- Lately, military cooperation has deepened with joint projects producing armaments ranging from fighter jets to guided missile frigates. The MBT 2000 tank and JF-17 Thunder Fighter Aircraft are some of the recent products of this deep co-operation.

- Since 1986, China and Pakistan have been co-operating on Nuclear Technology, having setup a 300MW power plant in Punjab in 1999, building another to go live next year; and widely suspected to have supplied critical knowledge and components for Pakistan's military nuclear program.

The US would thus like to move very quickly to carve up Pakistan, so that it always has atleast one part under its control and Baluchistan, by the sea is just perfect.

So why does the US need yet another base in Central Asia? After all it has Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, is landlocked, making it a fairly poor US base, thus a fairly ineffective staging area against Iran or China.

Baluchistan, with one edge sitting on the Arabian sea and its borders nicely touching Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, is the perfect base in Central Asia both for Military purposes and as a vital transportation link of the vast oil and natural gas reserves of Central Asia. An added bonus: Baluchistan itself is rich in gas and oil!

And who is helping Obama goto Baluchistan? None other than that lovely excuse to take over any country: Osama bin Laden. He's in Afghanistan, take it over. Oh, now he's escaped to North West Pakistan, bomb the place; now he's escaped into Baluchistan, enter Baluchistan. Love it, what a simple and wonderful excuse - and people called the Bush Administration stupid!

Ofcourse the Indian perspective in the matter is that it will be all the more happy with a carved up Pakistan, the smaller the better, easier to dominate and control.

Oh, but please note, China is not letting go so easily. It's helping build a deep sea port in Baluchistan at Gwadar at this very moment, so it has already established its direct presence in the region.

So folks, with Pakistan, US, China and India jostling over Baluchistan, and Iran probably entering the fray soon, the great game continues, get set for a bloody 7 years to see it through!

A July tale of 2 investments

2009-07-24T16:04:00.003+05:30

July '09 will go down as a very interesting month in memory for me. For the 1st time one of my investment companies has attracted keen interest from several VC firms, so exciting times for us there. I am so proud of the founder and his hard work.

On the exact opposite end, another one of my investments, this time a web media business, which was not going anywhere in the 1st place, the founder copied all the data and users of the original website to start a parallel website! How sad! I guess some people just don't have it in them when it comes to building something.

More to come in later posts on the business that is attracting VC investments...

UH? Udaipur voted World's best city ahead of even NYC!!!

2009-07-13T23:41:00.002+05:30

How do they do these thing? How does boring Udaipur win ahead of New York (which came in at no. 8).

I was in Udaipur for friend's wedding a few years back. We landed at a tacky airport and drove for 1.5 hrs through dusty roads to get to our "Palace" hotel: A brand new hotel designed like Palace.
We had a great time because the whole hotel was taken over by our gang and 2 days we didn't venture out. There was a man made island in Udaipur lake (yes Dubai, the maharajas beat you to it by a 1000 years), where there is a pleasure palace(no other word for it), which took centerstage. We rocked 48 hrs non stop and loved it.

But I saw the place on my way in and out, not worth a 2nd visit and not worth a visit unless your'e going with a big group and staying in one of the Palace hotels.

Not sure how a place like Udaipur comes in at No. 1, read the link and find out !

3 important reasons Bing is good for us

2009-06-22T23:00:00.003+05:30

and all begin with the same word: Choice
1. Choice for users: Bing is the 1st real competitor to Google. For 10 years Google has dominated the search scene with its fabulous search engine. But I felt the last 5 years, the search engine has stangnated. It didn't add any new interesting functionality, it didn't improve its image search and its video search is quite basic. Now the choice exists. I now prefer Bing's Video search (remarkably better) and have also started checking search results on both Google and Bing.

2. Choice for advertisers: Rates on Google for many spots were getting quite absurd (thus the superhigh profits earned by Google!). Because Bing is bound to get good market share over the years, advertisers will have a choice, which will drive down ad rates.

3. Choice for websites: People tend to forget that search engines are nothing but a collection of data from all websites. The problem with Google has been is that websites, such as my Flora2000.com have had to remain pretty stagnant from a content perspective because the search engine with 70% of the market, did not adopt any new ranking methods for the last 5 years! Now with Bing, hopefully things will change and each Search Engine is sure to outdo the others and release new features. Websites can now choose to release features keeping in mind that it will show up on one search engine but may not on the other, which is ok, if both have decent market share.

I really admire Microsoft for coming from behind once again with a strong product. I'd watchout if I were Google, because MS beat the leader in the Spreadsheet (Lotus), the wordprocessor (Wordperfect), the Browser (Netscape), the Gaming Machine (Nintendo, Sega), to dominate the space.

Differance between Delhi & Bombay

2009-05-24T02:05:00.002+05:30

After a few weeks in Delhi last month and then going out a few times in Bombay, realised that the key difference between the 2 cities is how everything is stated.

In Delhi on each occasions when we went out for dinner our friends would be typically attired in a Cartier watch, Versace jeans (with belt strategically under the label), Gucci shoes, Louis Vutton bag and carrying a Vertu phone. The conversation would be about how much they spent on renovating their new farmhouse (with ear & eye popping numbers) and how they took their 3 maids with them on holiday to Monaco (Miami, London, etc). If they bumped into someone at the restaurant, their friends would be similarly turned out. The dinner was inevitably in a 5 star restaurant where there would be lots of fuss with the staff on the meal and the chef would inveitably visit our table. Later they would leave in Range Rover piolted by a chauffer in white uniform with a cap to match. We would always feel underdressed attired in rolled up sleeves with no watch and having arrived in lowly rental car.

In Bombay, out for dinner our friends would turn up for dinner similarly attired as us, usually with no watch and non descript outfits. The place we'd meet would normally be a club, or a low profile resteraunt with excellent food, where we'd be going for years and where the owner is well known to us. If the conversation ever moved to material things, then it would always be about how much they saved in doing the deal, if they bought a house for Rs. 10 cr ($2Million), you could never hear that from them, you'd hear something like "oh I got it for Rs. 2.5cr, because I knew the developer really well and he gave me a special discount", which would leave everybody at the table fuming and jealous on the bargin struck. If they went on holiday to Dubai or New York, it would be about all the art galleries visited or how they got an amazing deal at the place they stayed. They would leave in their self drive Honda or Toyota cars, or a vintage Mercedes.

In Delhi one always overstates to show how successful one is; in Bombay one always understates to show how smart one is!

India's shameless silencing of citizens

2009-05-23T02:27:00.004+05:30

Today's newspapers carried stories of how Sapna Pereira was arrested after protesting for not receiving a MHADA flat as part of the lottery. She had been applying for many years but did not receive an apartment; and because she is a widow with small chilren living with her inlaws where she is constantly ill-treated, in frustration she started shouting and tearing her clothes and tried to strangle herself. The answer of our self righteous government officials: arrest her and slap charges on her of creating a scence (sec 332), damaging property (section 427), et al!

2 days back, noted RTI activist Krishna Raj Rao, along with 10 other activits went to meet the Maharashtra Chief Information commissioner, Suresh Joshi, when he did not listen, they started singing the National Anthem. The government immediately silenced them and arrested them, on grounds of "tresspass" and sent them to jail for 2 days! Truly shocking.

Is this anyway to treat the frustrated and protesting citizens of our country? This is government gone all wrong. Is India turning into a Police State where no one can raise their voice against the government?

On the other hand you have politicians who incite violence which even gets people killed and they walk around free.

I was in Amsterdam a few years back when there were street protests against the government and I was happy to see that despite citizens shouting abusives at the government, the police stood by and simply maintained order. This is how our governernment needs to behave, respecting frustration and and venting of anger by our people.

May these protesters never silence due to the intimidating acts of our government. May those in power respect our people and act on the frustrations expressed.

The message the government is sending out "Don't protest, don't express frustration, don't oppose, only live in fear"

STOP THIS SHAMELESS BEHAVIOUR.

BJP denies India a credible 2nd alternative

2009-05-17T02:31:00.005+05:30

Once again the BJP has lost, and their numbers are even worse than they were 5 years back in 2004. Once again the BJP fought this election with a strategic emphasis on communal divide. They then went all out to promote this, with aggressive campaigning across India, running newspaper advertisements, making TV appearances, running large scale online banner campaigns; and they even gave social media marketing a go via Facebook and Orkut groups; and their leader LK Advani even aggressively promoted his blog, the 1st of a major Indian politician. So interms of marketing execution they were A++.

It is their product that was faulty that cost they yet another election. They are trying to push a communal strategy where they hold one religion superior over others, to a youthful India (60% of India is under 25) who has grown up on a live TV & Internet diet of MTV, Reality Shows, Soap Operas, Travel Shows, Discover Channel, Fashion TV, Tabloids, Social Networking, Blogging, Wikis, Gaming and 20/20 cricket; who have been indulging more and more in cross community marriages; and work in corporate cultures where all are welcome, where skill is the only thing that counts! Are the youth of India interested in one community greater than the other? Ofcourse not! They are interested in buying house, nightclubbing, playing tennis, travelling and running up the corporate ladder. This is now no longer a theory, it has been proven at great cost of 2 national election losses for the BJP.

I am however sad that the BJP product is faulty. It takes away from the people a credible 2nd alternative to the Congress, who have scored a homerun once again, up 41% from the last election! With no credible 2nd alternative, we have no choice but to vote for the Congress; there is no alternative party that presents a merit based agenda of development that we can choose from. Its sad for the country.

I would love it that India has 2 strong political parties which present an option of development agendas, so that we may choose amongst them.

The BJP may have lost, but its far from a spent force, it has the national presence and millions of party workers. It needs to shed the communal divide plank and solidly base itself on development. It should do this as soon as possible, so that in 5 years it provides India with a choice. Ofcourse it has other ills such as lack of youth in their party, but that is not as large an issue as their core positioning as a communal party. Lets hope someone in there wakes up!

Ps. its interesting to see that independents went up from 5 last election to 9 this time, possibly showing that people are looking for alternatives.

PPs. The CPI+CPM's anti development policies of the last 5 years gave them a thumping defeat, down 62% from the 2004 elections! This again shows that India wants a pro development government.

Air France fined in India for racism

2009-05-16T22:53:00.003+05:30

Air France was fined Rs. 40,000 per passenger by an Indian court for racist behavior against its Indian passengers and did not serve them meals onboard their flights. A few years back when flying Lufthansa I too observed a very unfriendly attitude by the ground staff in Frankfurt towards many Asian flyers.

I also saw a very unfriendly attitude in the air by Air Austria staff and extremely rough behaviour at Vinenna Airport where flights were delayed due to winter weather, but there was inadequate information to passengers.

Personally, I have experienced lousy service by Lufthansa's Miles & More program, where due to errors they had missed 14 of my flight! Even after writing to their program director, he refused to give me credit while accepting that I had indeed flown those flights, but because in their computer my name (there was a mistake in the way they had entered my name) did not exactly match the name on my tickets he would not give me the credit! Disgusting!

I really don't know what Indian passengers choose to fly these rude European airlines and I can imagine its obviously due to price. I guess that is why every advertisement by Lufthansa and all these other airlines is about cheap tickets! Not exactly the best way for them to stay in the black.

My Tweet Cloud

2009-01-13T22:48:00.003+05:30

Ok, I've been Tweeting away this month, so what have I been Tweeting about? My cloud shows that Good, Remindo & Dubai are amongst my top words! See below.

Click the cloud to see a larger version and build your own cloud

Raju's jail song

2009-01-12T22:02:00.002+05:30

Found this on the Internet today posted in a comment:

What Raju is singing
by cool bloke on Jan 12, 2009 08:59 PM

my name is Ramalinga Raju
main Satyam ka founder hoon
khaate hai khaali, balance sheets jaali
satyam employees ki hai lagne waali
.
.
jisne bhi yaad aaye, ga**d marne chale aaye
jisne bhi yaad aaye, ga**d marne chale aaye
.
.
Hyderabad ki police chowki, jholi(ssorry...kholi) number 420

Arrrrrest me please!!!!!!

abhi abhi jail ke andar ek company kholi hai
investors ne bhi lagayi bad chad kar boli hai
jailor bhi raazi, qaidi bhi raazi
kab tak chalegi yeh jaalsaazi
.
.
jisne bhi yaad aaye, ga**d marne chale aaye
jisne bhi yaad aaye, ga**d marne chale aaye
.
.
Hyderabad ki police chowki, jholi(ssorry...kholi) number 420

hahahaha

10 Rockstar brands started in college

2009-01-09T22:20:00.002+05:30

While most were mucking around and getting drunk, some took the time to set up kick ass businesses. Read the whole article here

Awesome Guy Kawasaki coverage of MacWorld Expo

2009-01-09T17:58:00.003+05:30

Guy yesterday posted FAB coverage of Mac World to his blog.

Here are some of HIS pics. Enjoy.

Here is his full post http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/01/pictures-from-m.html

The differance between 2008 Jan & Now

2009-01-07T12:20:00.002+05:30

On this day, 1 year ago......... .. RBS paid $100bn for ABN Amro.

For this amount , today one can buy.......

1. Citibank $22.5bn
2. Morgan Stanley $10.5bn
3. Goldman Sachs $21bn
4. Merrill Lynch $12.3bn
5. Deutsche Bank $13bn
6. Barclays $12.7bn

And still have $8bn change...... with which, one would be able to pick up

GM,

Ford,

Chrysler and

the Honda F1 Team............

Beautiful Dubai Marina

2009-01-05T00:14:00.006+05:30

Dubai - An insider's view of the Bubble

2009-01-04T23:01:00.004+05:30

Dubai Marina

When in Dubai it's very rare that one gets a chance to interact with a UAE national, also known as Emirati's or "Locals" to the Expat community. Probably because they are extremely few in number, just 2%, when compared to the total population.

So, it was with much delight that I read the comments on Dubai by an Emirati with a PHD, who identified himself as Fairplayer1 in comments on CBSNEWS.com. I am reproducing in Full his (or is it Her?) comments dated 3rd Jan 2009:

"As a UAE national with PhD in law I have to admit that Sheikh Mohamed has failed to put in place a transparent judiciary and has concentrated more on self PR by anouncing unrealistic project"

" As someone who lives and breathes real estate since its first days here in Dubai, I feel it is necessary to see the cause of the boom and only then we may be able to make some calculated estimates of the future market condition.

1. Dubai real esate growth was based on a promise of freehold, residence permit, tax free benefits for nationalities who have certain restrictions in their countries and saw dubai as a safe secure investment opportunity.

2. Government of dubai removed the residence permit guarantee by buying a property. So automatically no tax free status, coz if you are not a resident of Dubai you can not open bank account & you are still liable for taxes in your country.

3.Nakheel/emaar/dubai holding factor: All these companies hate each other and therefore fight for the attention of sheikh mohammed, which means the greed and ego overtake logic and feasibility!!! result: Excessive lands/properties/ mega projects without proper planning & infrastructure in place.

4. Universal law supply Vs. Demand: nobody realises that the already anounced projects in dubai will need about an extra 6 million people to live in it!!!! (From Lagoons, meydan, dubailand, tatweer, mizin, industrial projects, emaar, bawadi, the world, the universe, palm deira, port rashid, waterfront, arabian canal, dubai world central….)Excuse me thats almost double the UAE population.

5. Loose the Confidence You loose everything: The investors/buyers are wakening up to the reality & there is absolutely no confidence in the market not only because of the global financial crisis but mainly because of the over supply & fear of the crash.

6. Genius Government policies: dubai government is its own worst enemy, at times like this what does dubai do? They launch new mega projects & new development companies like meraas with ambitious projects that will only further dampen market confidence.

7. Investor’s security: Dubai’s judicial system is as good as any underdeveloped country with selective rights depending who the complaint is against.

8. No human rights when it comes to dubai police. infact torture and enforced disappearance has become common in dubai under the umberella of the state security they can attach anything to anyone to reach their commercial targets.

9. Everybody owns 20% of several properties: Paying a few installments does not make you theowner so when the next installments come due and there is no quick sales like the good old days, what happens? Sell below the price or lose your deposit with the developers…. results in what we call “distress sell”

10. Oil prices & Inflation: ofcourse oil prices doubled so did the cost of steel & cement & food & labor accomodation… result abnormaly increase in construction prices on a weekly basis!!!… so an increase in property prices due to rising cost….

11. Decrease in Oil prices: Sudden decrease in everything from food prices, to raw materials….. creating sudden panic as properties are cheaper to build and a fear of further reduction is iminent.

12. There are too many chefs in the tiny real estate kitchen of dubai, have you noticed there aren’t any happy faces in the media anymore!!! what happened to the so called international anouncements about their acquisitions…

13.The Sheikh factor: when the ruling family is desperately getting into everythng from real estate, to owning or managing coffeshops and bakeries, landries…. then the opportunities for the public is becoming less and less which means a lot of unhappy UAE nationals and residents…. which everyone know will not help the already unstable state of dubai.

14. Big brother factor: let there be no doubt Abu Dhabi will eventually overtake dubai for the right reasons. money is not an issue thanks to oil & there is no rush to sell everything just to raise funds for the previously anounced project like in dubai. Dubai’s power in UAE will be reduced due to lack of funds, money talks!!!

15. regulatory body with no teeth: RERA is supposed to ensure that developers/real estate agents/ landlords/ follow the rules and regulations… what happens if a developer or an agent does not follow the law? NOTHING… just a 100,000 fine… comparing to the hundreds of millions at stake its a drop in the ocean.

16. Public Prosecution & Corruption: Everything in public prosecution is relative & variable…. there are cases of misrepresentation by nakheel, for example selling thousands of villas and after 2 years just cancelling the project…. nobody can make a complaint. Likewise several private developers & real estae agents operating in a fraudulent manner are let go off the hook.

"The laws broken by sheikh maktoum hasher (winner of world scam award 2008) to elevate himself from a poor sheikh to be recognised as a real sheikh:
1. Misrepresentation/ False promotional campaign (showing photos of construction of JBC1,2,3,4,5 for the sales of Ebony Ivory project) while there is no contractoron site, no building permit…. this is a criminal offense under uae law. (But RERA & SHEIKH MOHAMMED HIS UNCLE R SLEEPING!!!)
2. dynasty zarooni who is a real estate broker has been collecting money into their own account this is 100% illegal… infact in some cases they have even sold properties with 100% down payment, imagine the poor buyers when they realise te photos shown in gulfnews were lies!!!
3. ofcourse no escrow/trust account… No construction…
4. Threatening investors and staff of al fajer properties. Investors in JBC1 are forced to move to another building s that sheikh maktoum hasher the wanna be poor sheikh can make a few millions through his friends who will sell the property to new buyers.
5. There is no immunity for sheikh maktoum hasher or his father sheikh hasher maktoum, sheikh mohammed is just too busy counting the money he has lost so he is a bit distracted now. he pretends as if he is above the law, but in reality he is a coward who can only threaten drivers and junior staff in al fajer"

As a matter of interest here is Dubai's strategic vision as laid down by it's Ruler Sheikh Mohammed AL Makthoum. It's interesting to see page 20 where he identifies Trade & Transportation as the main drivers of Dubai's growth.

Mumbai, Bombay, Mambai & Bambai

2008-11-29T21:15:00.004+05:30

The original 7 islands inhabited by Kolis that became this city

Till 1996, we called this city what we wanted, we called it Bombay in English, Mumbai in Marathi, Mambai in Gujrati and Bambai in Hindi. Then divisive politics happened and the one and only exclusive name became Mumbai. Bombayites and Bambaiyas became Mumbaikars. If after that you dared call this city anything but Mumbai you risked the wraith of political goons assualting you, or attacking your house.

Why this divisive politics? What is the need for a divisive strategy? Does it win more votes? Is it the only way? What about an inclusive strategy? Why not have added the names Mumbai, Mambai and Bambai to the then official name Bombay? After all isn't dosen't our own country have 3 names: India, Hindustan, Bharat ? Germany has 2 names: Deutschland and Germany; Holland is called both Netherlands and Holland; and there are many more examples.

The names Bombay and Mumbai both have historic origins. Bombay comes from the Portuguese term Bombaim, which means Good Bay, which probably refers to the fantastic natural bay and shipping harbour, that lead to the establishment of the Bombay port, which was instrumental in giving birth to this essentially trading and shipping city. The word Mumbai, originates from the patron goddess, Mumba Devi, of the Kolis (the original inhabitants of this land before it became a city) where the word Devi translates into the word Ai, which means mother in Marathi.

So why can't we have 2 names or 4 names? Why can't we allow people to use whatever they are comfortable in using? Whatever suits them. Surely our heart is large enough, because we have an Indian heart, which is known to be especially large.

Now that the follies of our divisive methods, which pits man against man, are coming haunt us through terrible events, where the lives of innocents is being lost, let us roll back these silly divisive actions and thinking, because more than adding 3 names, it is a roll back in our divisive thinking to a purer thinking, where we are once again inclusive in our thinking.

Lets campaign for Inclusive thinking, starting with adding 3 names to the existing solitary name of this beautiful city with beautiful people.

Why is there no SAG permanently in Bombay?

2008-11-29T14:13:00.004+05:30

The National Security Guard was established in 1985 after Operation Blue Thunder when the need for a dedicated anti-terrorism squad was felt. The NSG is a highly skilled, highly equipped and highly trained outfit of 14,500 commandos on deputation from the army, navy and air force.

The NSG has a dedicated counter terrorism and counter hostage wing known as the Special Action Group, SAG, which is tightly focused on rescue and counter attack in situations of terrorist and hostage situations.

The other wing of the NSG is known as the Special Rangers Group, SRG, whose job is to defend VVIPs (VV Important People/Places) from terrorism and other attacks and they can be seen guarding people such as the Prime Minister and important locations.

What struck me most about the terror attacks on Bombay that started 2 days back is that the Bombay Police where highly ill-equipped to handle terrorism. And ofcourse that is normal. A city's police force is raised to deal with crime and protection from anti-social elements, not high trained terrorists. One cannot expect a city's police force to have the budget, training and politics to be able to handle enemies who have been obviously trained to the standards of special forces.

The other thing that struck me was that the SAG had to be flown in from New Delhi to deal with the terrorists in Mumbai. By the time they left it was 1:30am (the crisis began at 9:30pm) and by the time they reached the airport and then onward onto the specific locations, it was already 6:00am. All the killing and hostage taking happened between 9:30pm and 6:00am! Infact as soon as SAG got in they started freeing the hostasges with the 1st batch being released at 6:30am.

So why does an important and venerable city like Bombay, the commercial capital, not have a SAG battalion based locally? why do they have to be flown in from Delhi?

Is it something to with politics? Yesterday the Chief Minister of Maharastra was quoted in the papers as saying that "we need to raise a force like SAG in Maharashtra" !!! Why???

I think it's the fault of disgusting politics and sheer Indian incompetence that there is no SAG unit in Bombay. In addition to the benefits of rapid response time, the team will be familiar with local establishments and terrain, making them that much more effective.

For the sake of nearly a 1000 people that lost their lives in Bombay and so that their sacrifices do not go in vain, let us be sensible and setup a SAG permanent unit in this great city.

Our Pledge Against These Cowardly Attacks

2008-11-28T23:34:00.003+05:30

I hope you are safe and your resilience not too shaken by these shocking and distasteful events that are now ongoing for 48hrs in Mumbai.

These attacks by cowards on unarmed civilians at the leisure centers of our city, in the evenings when people were relaxing after working hard, and on those places which Indian & International company executives frequent, have been designed to disrupt Indian business activities and demoralize teams. They are meant to cast fear into the minds of foreign visitors and parents/families of our cities' workers. And they are meant to breed mistrust. They want us to abandon our work so that we as teams fail, so that investments into India stop, so that our growth fails, so that we descend into chaos.

Our response to these cowards will be that we will not fall for the fear that they are attempting to create. They do not realise that while we Indians may be an easy going, jovial people, we are not weaklings that will scare and run away. Our response will be that we will get back at these people by growing our country to great heights and making our country stronger. We will leave our opponents frustrated, not by attacking them in return, but by becoming successful and secure.

With several 100 dead and many more deeply wounded, this is also a time for deep reflection on the India that we are building and why we have been repeatedly subject to attacks, both from within and from external forces. For too long we have built a lawless India where the legal system is in shambles and people cannot get justice, breeding deep frustration; for too long we have built a corrupt India that robs efficiency, leading to unemployment and poverty; for too long we have built a greedy India with a great gap between the haves and have nots; for too long we have built a divisive India where we have divided up each other on the basis of caste, colour, state, wealth and religion; for too long we have built a disrespectful India where we do not value other people's opinions, always asserting ourselves; and for too long we have built an India befrit of teamwork, so that it becomes virtually impossible to get good results in anything, including basic security.

Some things thus that we must henceforth pledge:

we will never ever hinder or criticize any security measure or officer that is undertaken on the roads, malls, airports or offices. We will coorporate fully
we will not attack each other, verbally or physically, over any issue, big or small.
we will treat each others' point of view with immense respect and listen to it carefully
we will work hard, sincerely and with 200% honestly
we will strive to become more productive and increase our growth beyond even our own expectations
we will be united and work tightly as a team
we will spread the message of sincerity and teamwork wherever we go
we will never complain when we have to stand up for the national anthem, because the reason we stand is in respect for those who lost their lives defending India.
we will work hard to build the legal system
we will work hard to remove corruption from it's root
we will not divide people or get divided

I would like to take this moment to express my grief and sympathy for the families of the security officers and civilians who lost their lives and were injured. My heart goes out to these victims, these brave people and their grieving families. Let us become more dignified, better people and more productive so that their sacrifices are not in vain.

Improving India's economy one name at a time

2008-06-11T02:05:00.003+05:30

One can't deny that ever since Bombay's name was changed to Mumbai in 1995 India's economy has boomed. The Mumbai change was followed by Bangalore to Bengaluru, Calcutta to Kolkatta, Madras to Chennai and a few others, all of which has undoubtedly contributed to Indias 10% annual GDP growth.

Now that Oil has gone over the top and the world economy is on the rocks, it's time to release some important strategic name reserves and make some important name related changes to shore up India's economy and ensure we do not miss our 10% target this year:

Orissa changes to Odisha
&
from now in Mumbai all nameboards have to be in both English and Marathi.

Both these important changes were passed by the respective state governments after debates in governing houses. I am so glad our politicians are doing the right thing and ensuring that the people live well and the economy keeps running.

When India attacks India

2008-05-25T17:32:00.002+05:30

It's bad enough that India's borders are being constantly attacked by Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, etc; and the secret service outfits of these countries have also created militant outfits within India that keep setting off bombs every few months.

What is even worse when Indians attack themselves. Everyday the media is filled with news of how some political or semi political outfit went violent and attacked people. Just today the story is about the Gujjar community in Rajasthan attacked people, police stations, blocked highways and dug up railways tracks. Lots of people lost their lives as a result, 1000s were injured, lots of economic damage was done and people are generally in a state of fear.

Another story today is about political parties in Mumbai, namely the Shiv Sena & the MNS are attacking North Indians and destroying property. They beat up so called North Indian taxi drivers for immigrating to Mumbai and destroyed these poor people's taxis and even killed a few. Then they went around destroying museums and commercial establishments because they had the word "Bombay" in their name.

This is happening with total and complete disregard for the law. My view is that if you are unhappy with something, goto the court and complain, but don't resort to destruction and violence. When the very political parties that are supposed to govern do this, it speaks volumes of the state of affairs of our judicial system and the liberties of the common man: there is virtually no justice in India !

India, please stop attacking yourself.

Why the US needs to lower taxes and attract foreign investments

2008-05-17T02:39:00.002+05:30

With 30% Federal Corporate Income Tax, 10% Sate Corporate Income Tax, and in the case of New York City, another 10% City Corporate Income Tax, and with Sales Tax of nearly 10% in most states, the US is one of the most tax intensive countries in the world.

Which is a shame, because it fabulous infrastructure, highly qualified workforce, huge capital markets and large domestic market the US is one of the best places to set up a global head quarter. A company could base it global HQ in the US and cut short by many years the time it takes to grow.

But these high taxes come in the way, so instead companies want to locate the corporate head quarters in Dubai, London, Gibraltar, or are agnostic about where they locate their headquarters.

With the diminished role of the US Dollar as the world's reserve currency, the US has seen since June 2007 reduction in monthly Government Bond purchases by foreign nations from $300B a month $80B a month. This has sucked a lot of low cost liquidity out of US capital markets.

To compensate for this reduced liquidity, the US needs to go all out to woo foreign companies to shift their global headquarters to the US. And the best way to do this is to cut taxes drastically and even go as far as giving 20 year tax holidays to any businesses over $5M turnover that relocate headquarters to the US.

With businesses relocating to the US, investments will follow and the US should easily be able to compensate for the low cost $220B it is losing out every month.

The unreal world economy

2008-05-02T02:06:00.003+05:30

Oil is at $110 a barrel, yet the price of petrol and diesel hasn't gone up in India the last 3 years. Since a year back, oil has doubled from around $60 to approximately $110 today. Yet, I am paying the same in Rupees for my petrol as I was last year.

How is this possible ?

The price of petrol is being artificially maintained. India's 3 large petrol and diesel retailing companies, all state owned, are deep in the red, their combined debt has mounted to over $2000 Billion !

This is being done to keep people happy, to keep prices from going crazy. To ensure that people can go on living and there are no major disturbances in towns & cities.

But this is not sustainable. How long can the oil companies go on borrowing? This is madness.

The price will have to correct and when it corrects by doubling, cost of food, transport and electricity will go sky high. A majority of people's incomes will go towards simply meeting these costs and people will be forced to reduce spending on new homes, new cars, new tvs, holidays, clothes, etc. The economy will come to a screeching halt.

This is not just an Indian problem, this will be a world problem. The cost of the basics is likely to go so high that people are just not going to be able to afford anything else.

Unless, the world once again gets a new source of cheap energy, quickly.

What can that be? It can only be Nuclear & Coal. I think the planet should start going Nuclear on the double. There is no more time to waste deliberating if it is good or not, it is necessary. Coal fired power has already started, all recent power plants coming up seem to be coal based.

But can all this happen fast enough, or is the planet going to be caught napping and we will end up with 7 to 10 very hard years. Well, we'll find out in early 2009 by which time oil should have crossed $200.

Google: Don't be STUPID and ARROGANT

2008-04-30T15:49:00.005+05:30

Here is a Google horror story, and it's happening to me. Suddenly while using my email in the middle of my work day, I get the message that "Your email has been locked down for 24hrs due to illegal activity". This is not my ordinary email, but my Apps email.

I read all their reasons for the LOCKDOWN and I was in violation of none of them. I am using no 3rd party software, not using 2 machines for the same account, not sending spam, nothing. Yet it happens.

Google is so sure of their technology that they believe they are 100% right when it comes to taking severe & damaging action against a user.

The best part is their support form does not even contain support for Google Apps email. You have to fill in your gmail id in "what if your email id", so I am not even sure if their customer service centre guys will understand what is to be done.

Google, I can tell you that you are sure to lose me as a customer and my whole company if this issue is not resolved quickly and keeps re-occurring.

Update: Google resolved the issue within 30 mins of the lockdown; not sure if this was due to the complaint I filed, or if it is auto-programmed into their system.

Back to IE & loving it

2008-04-19T18:21:00.002+05:30

After spending years with FireFox, I never imagined I'd move back to IE. But with all of FF's memory leaks, which seemed to grow with each release, I moved back to IE 7. And what a relief. All the same functionality, none of the misery. It's a shame that FF couldn't resolve this issuse, which may happen with FF 3....

Getting brand right

2008-04-14T23:43:00.003+05:30

Getting brand right is the differance between just doing business and doing profitable business. If you don't get your brand right, if it isn't unique, the you are likely to spend a vast amount of money on being just another brand and thus you don't make any profits.

Here is a long but great presentation on how to get your brand right.

| View | Upload your own

Here is another on how to get Luxury Branding right

| View | Upload your own

Tips for startups

2008-03-10T00:16:00.002+05:30

Reposting this from my original post in VentureWoods

There is an interesting post doing the rounds on the blogsphere which talks about 17 tips for startups.

Most of these tips apply to the US, but some are universal, and the one I like the most: fire employees who are not workaholics. I totally agree with this one and strongly recommend that every startup apply it. You don’t need a big team, you need 2 to 3 people working 18 hours a day, 7 days a week with no vacations. Find them and keep them.

Anyway, that post was followed by a Techcrunch post, which was a startup not too long ago and the founder had his own advice.

If you have any additional advise then do share here in the comments section.

Here are some of my tips:
1. Try and outsource as much as possible. You may not be able to recruit great people because you are a startup, but you will find fantastic entrepreneurs who are available to work on your project in an outsourced capacity.

2. Cash is a very scarce in a startup. Try and do equity deals with outsourced companies, this will bring down your costs. You will be surprised how many are willing to take equity if they like your idea

3. Don’t recruit employees. Recruit co-founders. The best people no longer want to work for companies, they want to own them, so recruit co-founders. You will be amazed at the quality of people you get, far better than if you advertsied for employees. You will need to give them some stock, but that can come from the ESOP pool. Goto www.salary.com to see how much you should set aside for ESPOS

4. Drive the costs down of everything. Don’t be shy of bargaining.

5. Work like crazy, don’t relax, get everything done at 5 times speed. You will run out of money faster than you think. You customers will come later than expected. The only chance you have of beating the system is keeping costs low and working faster than money runs out.

Will housing trigger Iran war?

2007-10-26T23:03:00.000+05:30

Sub Prime is a huge mess; and housing prices are down and are likely to keep going down. The forecast of the US economy growth rate of Q4 this year was recently downgraded by Maroeconomic Advisers to 1.6% from 2.7%

A US recession appears on the way.

Each time there has been a housing crises, the US has slipped into recession, except 2 times: 1951 and 1967: Korea War and Vietnam War. Defense expenditure triggers the money multiplier which pulls an economy out of recession.

Will the US goto war in Q2 of 2008 with Iran to pull out of recession?

My 3 other blogs

2007-10-24T16:03:00.001+05:30

You've probably noticed that I have posted anything this month. That's because I have been busy with 3 other blogs which I have been contributing to both in content and in strategy for growth.

Flora2000's Blog. This is the blog of my company. The blog keep customers and suppliers uptodate with what Flora2000 is upto behind the scenes. For example, we recently participated in a large trade fair in Florida, so all the pics and details are posted here

GoSmellTheFlowers.com/blog. This is a community of people who are out to inspire people to look beyond their cubicle. We post and discuss various offbeat happenings in the world and have a whale of a time. Check it out, its sure to bring a smile to your lips.

VentureWoods. This is the hang out for the Indian start-up community, with both entrepreneurs and investors featuring as contributors and commentors. We have recently been having a very interesting discussion about whether VCs should invest in companies earlier.

Blogging is a terribly exciting place and I'm taken in by it 200%. I'm visiting BlogWorldExpo in Vegas on 8,9,10,11 Nov so if you're gonna be there, leave me a comment to this post and we'll get together.

Belgium's new national airline: Jet Airways

2007-09-23T02:07:00.000+05:30

Thanks to some good old mismanagement and corruption, Sabena, Belgium's national airline, stopped existing in 2001. Leaving Belgium with no major airline flying international routes.Thus making Belgium a rare 1st world country with full fledged national carrier.

Along comes ever expanding JetAirways fueled by massive demand from India and manages to make Brussels it's European hub. A first by any airline from Asia. From here JetAirways will send flights to all over India: Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, etc and will also connect major cities in North America New York, Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco, etc.

Further Jet Airways forges a tight alliance with Brussels low cost carrier, Brussels Airways, which flies all over Europe. Creating a perfect hub and spoke system for connecting all of Europe with 2 important regions: India & North America.

This gives Jet Airways the same power as a European national carrier like Lufthansa or Swiss Air or KLM. Truly remarkable because all over the world the airline industry is highly protected and international airlines cannot set up a base. The commercial implications of this for Jet Airways can't be imagined and will be felt very deep into the future. Jet Airways, Indian government and Indian business will be able to capatalise on this in many ways and Belgium is sure to become India's beachhead into Europe.

I would even argue that Jet Airways is better positioned than Lufthansa or KLM to reap benefits from having a European hub, because Brussels has fantastic train connections to London (under 2hrs by Eurostar) and air connections into Africa where the French and Belgians were active colonists.

To begin to understand this, one has to look at the numbers. To start with, by Dec 07, Jet Airways will operate 10 flights a day from Brussels. This will soon be stepped up to 35 flights a day. Brussels Airways operates over 90 destinations out of Brussels which are now tightly connected into Jet's flights. Simultaneously, Jet Airways is making arrangements to operate daily flights from Brussels to Shanghai, Dhaka & other Asian destinations. When those come through, its going to be even more flights out of Brussels. The target is to soon handle 1 million passengers and 60,000 tons of cargo out of Brussels.

How much can Jet Airways grow from here? Last year Lufthansa handled 55M passengers and in 2008 this will go upto 60M. There is absolutely no reason why Jet Airways cannot grow into an airline of Lufthansa's size, especially since it now has 2 hubs: India & Belgium, something which even mighty Lufthansa does not have.

There is one small problem: Belgium may break up into 2 states as the Dutch and French speaking population can't seem to get along. This will cause all kinds of economic difficulties for Belgium and may cause Jet's careful plans to spin out of control.

The 9 year life of an Internet application

2007-09-18T00:59:00.000+05:30

Ok, I'm quite over Facebook. I think their killer feature applications with feeds has actually turned into the latest form of spam. My feed is full of junk and nothing useful.

On the plus side I am connected with tons of friends and I never have to worry about losing contact. But that's about it. Status is passe, because everyone's updates are so boring. Photos is passe, because have ODed on them. Wall is still OK and good way to notify the whole gang.

For the last few months I have been using Smallworld. And now everytime I meet the slightly older, slight better off individual, they automatically ask me "are you on Smallworld". Not a word about Facebook.

Its not just the exclusivity of Smallworld that's appealing. Its the trusted opinion. If Facebook users rate a nightclub, you're never sure what its all about because the users are such a mixed bag; but if Smallworld users rate it, you can be sure that its more or less in line with your tastes. Ditto with questions and answers. Ask a question and Smallworld answers tend to be normally what you're looking for.

Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook? Could very well be. Smallworld will be the 1st community catering to high end lifestyle needs and a small but important group will split from Facebook to Smallworld. Then we might find that another community catering to under 21 with lots of gaming breaks off another chunk from Facebook. And so on.

The splitting off phenomena is known as divergence. As a product matures, new products emerge catering to a more specific group within that user base. In the old days this took decades, but in rapidly moving Internet times, the cycle is down to 9 years:

Year 1 - 3 Product emergence
Year 4 - 6 Product's best years. Emergence of new divergent competitors
Year 7 - 9 Product's decline. The rule of the divergent competitors
Year 10+ Product stays and can be kept profitable, but its difficult.

Moral of the story: Best time to launch a new product, when the competing product is doing its best. Needless to say the new product must be divergent and highly innovative.

Britney Spears and Filmfare awards

2007-09-14T22:57:00.000+05:30

The papers this week were full of the horrible and embarrassing performance that Britney Spears put on. So when I received a link in my email to check out the video, I couldn't resist.

I watched the whole video and kept search for the embarrassing moments when Britney was awkward and made a fool of herself. There was nothing. Then it struck me: Aah, as per International standards she was plump and a bit out of tune, just a teeny weeny bit. But I had been watching Indian live shows at things like the filmfare awards where all the actresses are FAT and completely out of sync and wear the most ghastly clothes.

If this was India and this was Britney's performance, it would have been hailed as the greatest Indian live performance ever.

So its Indian standards vs US standards; and its only when you watch US standards impartially do you realize how low Indian standards actually are.

The world wants to fly to India these days

2007-08-20T23:22:00.000+05:30

Cheapticket's blog says "seems the world wants to fly to India these days" and announces that Delta is offering low fares of around $1200 return from anywhere in the US.

Delta was the 1st airline to fly New York - Bombay direct, though the 1st to fly direct to India was Continental into Delhi. Now Air India has joined the fray flying NYC - BOM direct and will so offer a direct from Delhi as well. Add to this Jet Airways direct to the US (2 hr stopover in Brussels but same plane) and Toronto and suddenly there is a surge in capacity to the US. This is reflective of the rapidly growing relations between the US and India, be it strategic, business or personal.

I recall I also read that a San Francisco - Bangalore direct is coming up as well.

In a year, the seat capacity between India and the US is likely to double. Imagine that: 60 years work in 1 year!

India Reality Check 3: no legal recourse in India

2007-08-19T16:08:00.000+05:30

Yesterday's newspapers carried stories about a political party in Bombay rioting and burning vehicles; the papers of the week before carried stories of another political party's leaders physically attacking a female author. Everyday there are stories of these kind of serious criminal offenses with no action taken against them.

On the civil side its even worse. Every business knows that it is impossible to enforce contracts in India as it just takes too long (15 - 20 years). And every Indian knows to never ever take on any government official or body through the legal system because they will do all kinds of nasty things to you using the government machinery (tax raids, police lockup, etc).

In short the legal system is broken.

While there exist strong laws both on the civil and criminal side, the implementation is non existent. This is chiefly due to three reasons:

1. India has only 13 judges per million people, whereas the US has 150 per million. This results in millions of cases backlog at any given time. The average time it takes to settle non criminal cases is 20 years.

2. The judicial infrastructure is extremely weak. Many judges are not well trained and many are not provided with support infrastructure like typists, fans, desks, etc. Goto any court in India other than the High & Supreme court and you will find crowded claustrophobic rooms, where the poor litigants and even sorrier judges have to operate.

3. Judges are very poorly paid, thus keeping the better talent away. Did you know that the monthly cheque of a High Court judge is $600? I bet you can't even believe this. Do you expect the best and the brightest to apply? Or anyone to apply?

How will there be economic progress in India beyond a basic limit? There is only so much economic progress that can be achieved without a decent legal system. I think we are about to hit our economic growth plateau very soon, maybe 10 years at the most. After that growth may slow or there may even be negative growth.

The way out: private legal system. There is a great opportunity and need for a private legal system. Parliament has passed the Arbitration Act and this opens the way for a private disputes resolution mechanism. If private dispute resolution happens (and there is no reason why it should not happen) we will see massive continued growth of the economy.

India US nuclear deal: good for Inida

2007-08-12T03:52:00.000+05:30

Ok so India has signed away its sovereignty and will now forever remain a puppet to be tugged at by the US or anyone who supplies nuclear material. But what option did we have?

We don't have our own nuclear technology to produce energy in large quantities. All the years of research have led to a very poor nuclear program. I suspect mainly because it's government run, and like everything government run it limps on all four legs.

Oil & Gas aren't gonna last very long, especially that now the whole world is guzzling oil & gas instead of just Europe & US. How long before oil is at $200 a barrel and then runs out after that? 10yrs, 20yrs, 30 yrs maximum. What then? Solar, Hydro, Wind and other alternate energies haven't come far, so the only option will be nuclear.

Oh but what does it matter that we have given the US and others an advantage over us, anyway all their calls are answered here and all software too is made here; if they bully us too much, we'll just shut their systems down :)

What amazes me is that we got a deal at all. Why would the US or anyone else give India a special deal? They know that we need nuclear and can't get it. The obvious answer is that the great game is being played between the US (including NATO), Russia and China, and India is an important win.

For India it great news, we are in the US camp, a nation we can relate to and do business with. Good move by Indian politicians for once.

India reality check 2: 13.5% is the current rate of home loan interest

2007-08-12T03:48:00.001+05:30

Yes you've read the headline right, 13.5% is the current fixed rate at which you can take a housing loan. And many are doing it. This means the smallest slowdown in the Indian economy and salary growth slowing down will cause a lot of heartburn to a lot of people and the default rate will be huge.

People in India are going crazy taking loans because till 7 - 10 years ago it wasn't easy getting loans; and since the economy has been booming last few years, they haven't been hit.

India reality check 1: less than 250 aircraft in India

2007-08-11T04:52:00.000+05:30

For all the hype surrounding India, the fact is that all the airlines and private owners of aircraft put together do not have more than 250 planes on lease or ownership.

Air India has 50 60 aircraft
Indian Airlines about the same
Jet Airways around 40
all others together couldn't be more than 50
so its not even 250.

There are airlines in the US that each own 1000+ aircraft. Go figure what the India boom is all about.

Your thoughts?

MyPictr.com - great way to create profile photos

2007-08-05T21:35:00.000+05:30

See this nice photo of mine on the right? Its thanks to MyPictr.com. Earlier, I never bothered uploading any well cropped profile photos because it was just difficult and the results were poor. MyPictr.com however makes it super easy to crop your photos cause it has a neat zoom feature (you'll understand when you use it). Go get it.

(Almost) Bullish once again on India Internet

2007-08-05T19:02:00.000+05:30

Read today morning in one of the dailies that Reliance now has 5000 WiMax customers in Pune. Which by Reliance standards means 5000 very angry people. Jokes apart, this is good news for India, because lack of last mile has held back the Internet all over the country. Lets hope WiMax succeeds.

Also found this very bullish report on India, showing what the sentiment in the US is about India: http://www.pennysleuth.com/rpt/InvestingInIndia.htm

What do you think about India's future? Do you think that Indian will overcome it's severe infrastructure handicap to maintain its 9% year on year rate growth, or do you think things will slow down, even crash?

The Govt of India: god save the Internet

2007-08-03T00:50:00.000+05:30

Yes that picture above is of the website of the President of India on 2nd August 2007 (rather 3rd August 12:51am), which has been down since last night. Why? Because it rained in New Delhi and the building that hosts all government websites (known as National Informatics Centre or NIC), such as defense, income tax, President of India, Prime Minister, Railways, and 3000 other government websites, flooded and had no back-up or proper disaster recover system except for the neighborhood bucket shop...

Now we really know and how serious the Government of India is about the Internet. So much for their announcements of 100 Million broadband connections by Dec 2007 and WiMax across India.

US trip in pictures

2007-07-27T21:17:00.000+05:30

Was on a quick trip to the US last week, covering New York and San Fransisco in 4 days and weekend. The US is a changed place since my last visit in 2005. The mood is upbeat, the paranoia with security is lower (airports are more relaxed), everything has a nice resurgent energy about it with airlines looking brighter and staff friendlier; and the economy is doing well.

Alright! 120 posts up

2007-07-15T15:02:00.000+05:30

Ok I know 120 is not a traditional milestone number, but I just happened to realise that ITS 120 POSTS !

Started on March '06 with no mission other than to kill boredom, BombayCurry has come to be, well, nothing more than a bunch of rambling posts with spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes, and no particular direction, but a small but loyal readership

According to Google Analytics 167 people from all over the world visited in the last one month, and nearly 1500 since the start of 2007.

What I've been most pleased about is the fair amount of photos I have been able to post here. This is thanks to my great little Sony Ericsson K750i mobile, which in my opinion has the best digital camera built in; and I mean THE BEST, because it even puts my Nikon Cool Pix to shame.

What has been most disappointing since I started blogging is that global blog readership is growing much too slowly. I blame this on the poor design of blog reading tools which in my opinion are still much too complicated to use. Blogs have remained confined to techies and savvy Internet users. All average users have no idea about how to set-up RSS feeds and subscribe to blogs. I need to do something about that...

Thanks for regularly stopping by and reading, please keep commenting....I'll make sure I post atleast as regularly as I currently do.

Bank accounts then and now

2007-07-15T00:00:00.000+05:30

I opened my first bank account in 1989 when I joined St. Xavier's College in Bombay. The bank was located within my college itself, in a tiny room next to the Chemistry lab. It was called Corporation Bank St. Xavier's Extension Counter (Extension Counter because it was too small to be a full fledged branch). Opening the account was a 2 minute process where I wrote my name and my campus address on a small slip of paper and signed it. I was given a pass book in which all my transactions were recorded by the clerk; and I had to produce the pass book each time I needed to withdraw money. There was no cheque book for some reason.

I'd visit the bank once or twice a month to withdraw on the allowance my parents sent me. I first had to fill up a counter slip with a pen attached by chain to the counter and present it to the bank clerk, who would give me big brass token with a 2 digit number on it. Then I had to wait till my number was called by the cashier (who would be sitting inside a wooden cabin enclosed in steel wiremesh), take the cash and surrender the token.

Just as I was leaving college in 1992 the bank introduced cheque books, so I decided to keep my account there, as I didn't really need any other facilities like ATMs or loans; it also gave me a good excuse to visit my college once in a while. I have been using it ever since as my only bank account.

A month ago our company finance manager insisted that I get another "professional" account and build a "relationship" with a "good" bank, incase I needed loans; and most importantly that I should get a credit card because it was not good practice going to shops and restaurants and asking them to send the bill to the office to pay by cheque (seems perfectly fine to me).

I fell for the pitch and got very excited about getting an account; so decided to straight away get two new accounts: one with Kotak Bank and one with ICICI Bank, both of whose billboards' I could see everyday on my drive to work and back.

First I noticed that the forms were considerably longer than 1989 and they required 6 photos each, plus all kinds of ID proof. Plus I had to sign in atleast 10 places on each form. It took me a very long time to fill out both forms. I also had to open 2 accounts in each, one fixed and one savings, to avoid paying "bank charges".

My accounts opened and I got a large package from each bank with a letter from the "relationship" manager welcoming me to the bank (whatever happened to good ol' bank manager?) and informing me that I was eligible for all kinds of privileges and facilities, from holidays in Taiwan to emergency cash anywhere in the world.

I also got my credit cards, atm cards and a variety of privilege cards

Then the phone calls began.

In the middle of a meeting, a strange number would flash on my mobile and a marketing pitch would begin. In the first 20 days I must have received atleast 15 such calls, plus a few smses. If you hung up on them they would just call back a few minutes later. They just wouldn't stop despite calling the "relationship" managers and telling them strictly to stop calling me.

Finally, I let go of one of the two new banks, the one making the most calls and I am having some serious thoughts about shutting down the other one as well.

Meanwhile my banking continues with Corporation Bank St. Xavier's Extension Counter, who has never sold to me, never troubled me, never glamorized themselves; but just quietly keep doing their work. Isn't that how it should be?

How to easily take & edit screenshots

2007-07-08T16:32:00.000+05:30

I used to use Snagit, but somewhere in my comuter upgrades I lost my key. And because I didn't feel like paying for it again I figured out how to manage without it. Its quite easy.

1. Take a screenshot with using the Prt Scr (Print Screen) button on your keyboard

2. Open a PowerPoint slide

3. Hit Ctrl V and the screenshot gets pasted on your PowerPoint slide

4. Right click on the screenshot and use Save As to save it on your desktop

5. Goto the desktop and open the screenshot in Picture Manager

6. In Picture Manager you can crop it, resize it, covert it, compress it, etc. Save it after you are done

7. After you are through with 6, you may still want to add blurbs or make edits to the image. Locate the image on your desktop, right click and open with Paint. Here you can do all this. Save after you are done

Its all very easy and effective and free

Gspace - store files on Gmail via Firefox

2007-07-08T16:17:00.000+05:30

If you use FireFox browser (which you MUST because it's way better than Safari & Internet Explorer), then you should get Gspace. This is a nifty little Firefox addon them equally easily. If you are working between home pc, laptop and office pc, like me, then Gspace is an absolute necessity. No more carrying (or rather forgetting) flash drives and having to email self important files.

The image above is the Gspace interface which opens within Firefox itself. On the left are the files on your computer and on the right are the files uploaded via Gspace to your Gmail account. This dash in addition to allowing storage and retrieval of files on Gmail, allows you to easily manage and maintain and synchronize all computers.

Enjoy

Should India levy import duty on Google?

2007-06-30T05:41:00.000+05:30

Today Hillary Clinton made a statement that outsourcing is a problem and that some tax adjustments needs to be made to keep jobs in America.

As far as I am concerned Silicon Valley is stealing 1000s of jobs from India. SV is producing products like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, this very Blogger, etc which are freely being imported over the Internet into India. These products are then being "sold" in India, with their owner companies either charging end users for using these applications or by way of Indian companies advertising on them and passing on costs to Indian consumers.

India too should then tax software imported over the Internet. If these products were being made in India, then these jobs would be India. It can easily devise a whole new method of measuring all foreign currency payments for software and media. Infact with all software & media slowly and surely being delivered over the Internet, it is inevitable that a new definition of Imports will soon come about.

Why can't politicians stay out of a domain they don't understand, instead of forcing a global trade war?

Web 2.0 - Now in India

2007-06-26T22:50:00.000+05:30

VCs all over the world are proclaiming that web 2.0 is over, so what's this all about a Web 2.0 conf that you are inviting me to speak at I ask? Well it's in India my inviter explains, as if to mean "everything in India happens a few years later".

Jokes apart it was a good conf. I was really glad to hear how even giants like Citibank had woken up to the web and are consciously listening to bloggers; and they realize the pitfalls of starting hoax blogs and blogs promoting products.

Also very encouraging to hear that many publishers stated that advertising revenues in India have climbed quite a bit. Still bit too low for me, but good for the others.

Here is the webcast

The best kebabs of the Veda

2007-06-24T01:32:00.000+05:30

I'm in Delhi for Band of Angels' monthly investor presentation. After my work is done, my aunt takes me out for dinner to Veda, which is apparently a trendy restaurant opened by a celebrity (she didn't know who; but knowing Delhi its probably a fashion designer or a criminal, as Delhi doesn't have any other kind of celebrities). Whats the food? Indian she says. I protest! Its supposed to be very good she says defensively and almost remembers the name of the celebrity.

So we are there for our table at 9pm sharp because she was threatened on the phone that if we are even 15 minutes late our table will be given away. The decor is, well, Moulin Rouge, red and black with lots of mirrors, kitsch, Indian lamp motifs, candle lit feel. Lacking imagination, but not a bad feel, quite calming, relaxing and even trendy.

However the reason I am writing this in my blog, and why an entire post has been dedicated to it is because of the kebabs at this place. The best I have ever had, and trust me I've had 1000s of very high standard kebabs in my life. Order the Lamb Chops and the Mixed Platter and then await a divine experience. The flavour and melt in the mouth is simply the best.

Warning: While you're enjoying the kebabs, beware the Delhi "family" crowds which turn even the most upmarket places into noisy Indian bus terminals with their numerous children, crass manners and non stop arguing with waiters.

Gap opens in India, almost

2007-06-24T01:16:00.000+05:30

GAP is here, um, not quite...its being made in India, but officially not sold in India. So what does one enterprising guy do, he opens his own GAP store with the Indian made clothes, which are naturally cheaper than those else where and appropriately calls it GAPL or Gap for Less. Well done. Its right opposite my office if you want to do some shopping.

LinkedIn profile makeover

2007-06-18T02:04:00.000+05:30

Happened to stumble upon Guy Kawasaki's post about how its important to have a great LinkedIn Profile these days and how he gave his a makeover.

Done the same to mine.

The art of hype

2007-06-17T16:05:00.000+05:30

A colleague in our office recently underwent Human Factors' usability imporovement ceterification. She proudly published the link to her certificate on MSN Messenger.

A software company in Bangalore that I was dealing with was very excited about their Human Factors certification.

A colleague in the US who was part of the Flora2000 usability redesign team in 2004 also went thru Human Factors training and told me how her market rate has increased.

And recently the no. 1 newspaper in India, The Times of India, proudly advertised their newly redesigned website in their print edition boasting how good it was and that Human Factors had redone it.

Want to rush in for Human Factors' training?

Hold on.

Now the fact, the sad fact, is that Human Factors' own website is extremely poorly designed, something that both my colleagues who underwent the course agreed. The Times of India is also a very poorly designed site, cluttered and with space wastage. Ditto with the company in Bangalore whose own website at that time was poorly designed.

Look at the New York Times site and compare it to Times of India; NYT is a clean, readable site, with attention paid to details such as spacing between letters to improve readability; TOI is extremely cluttered with everything shouting: click me 1st.

Who are these Human Factor people? Well they are experts at hype. They have published reams of papers and given seminars on their usability improvement techniques, they proudly label their technique the Schaffer- Weinschenk Method after their founders and pitch it as the leading usability improvement technique in the world. Unfortunately, whatever that technique is, it does not produce stylish, uncluttered, easy on the eyes websites. Their websites all have the look from sites we used to see in 1999 - 2000 with only a focus on information rather than the readability of the information.

This is what happens when you fall for hype instead of using your common sense.On one side is Human Factor's own poorly designed website and their poorly designed flagship projects: Staples.com; TimesofIndia.com, etc, on the other side is their own hype about how good they are. And you go fall for the hype.

Look at what we have done

2007-06-12T00:08:00.000+05:30

You wanted it, you got it: prosperity. You evolved as a species and developed your mind, thru this mind you developed yourself, you developed your race, you upgraded your living standard. Now you don't have to be insecure anymore, now you don't have to worry about the wind outside, or diseases affecting you. Your future as a banker, lawyer, manager, entrepreneur, scientist, professor, model, actor, singer musician et al is secure.

But look at what you have done.

You have destroyed the poor innocent speechless creatures around you, you have orphaned the trees and the beasts. You have ruthlessly exploited them and thoughtlessly used them as entertainment and to serve you.

Here is the story of a small baby elephant called Laxmi, in this so called great world of ours, in this so called great country, where 100 million IT engineers bloom and everybody speaks in high fly intelligent speech using words like processes, disruptive, model, evolved, etc. This baby elephant has been a slave captive from the day it was born, it was taken away from its mother and its siblings and kept in chains.

But a baby is a baby, so at 4am while all of Mumbai (Bombay) slept, this baby bound in chains, got the urge to play, she slowly made her way to a nearby tree and frolicked with a few branches lying by. Can you imagine it: born a slave in captivity, with no mother, living in chains, and yet having the urge to play. Though we tried, we could not kill this in her, some small part of her was still alive.

No but we must not allow this to live, we must not allow this baby to have any joy. So soon enough her mahout got up and severely reprimanded her, for playing.

This my friends is the world we have built, which we are so proud off. So carry on with your ambition and your fighting and your drive and your high standard of living. Carry on with your designer car, designer house, designer clothes, your branded girlfriends and boyfriends, your high society life, your spa holidays, your Turkish carpets and your French wines...

2.0, 3.0 and all that

2007-06-10T17:02:00.000+05:30

Here is Orielly on Web 2.0 and how its all about "user data", quite a good listen

This got me thinking, are we still in Web 2.0 or are we moving even beyond? What are Netvibes.com, Pageflakes and iGoogle.com? They are channels, for which anyone can create content (Widgets) and these are then made available to the users of these channels.

Is this beyond 2.0? This is now no longer just about user data and sharing user data. This is about providing a channel and allowing anyone to broadcast to the audience.

This has been happening in a chaotic fashion the last 3 years with widgets on MySpace and the like, but now when it happens in an organised fashion, deeply integrated with the channel, then we move onto a whole new era....

all hail 3.0

The $22,000 Leopard Cat

2007-06-03T18:07:00.000+05:30

A breeder in California (where else) has bred a cat by crossing African leopards and with a cat. The result: a domestic cat with the print of a leopard/cheetah. Click on the image below to visit their webiste and order one for yourself.

S3: Amazon's Secret Weapon

2007-05-20T02:28:00.001+05:30

As a web entrepreneur, data storage has always been my nightmare problem. Dreams of critical data wiped out, or just not being able to manage all those servers that store the data, or not being able to serve data fast enough, or...or...

Then along comes Amazon S3, Simple Storage Engine, completely managed storage at $0.15/GB/month storage, with a simple interface that takes literally minutes of programming and wallah you have headache free unlimited storage for your web app.

Already this service is being used by large and famous internet sites, such as SmugMug and WebMail.

Amazon has solved one of the biggest problems on the web today. And they have kept a very low profile about it. I predict that Amazon S3 will go onto to becoming the world's largest data warehousing business, taking away business and revenue from traditional hosts like ThePlanet and Rackspace.

"Stubborn Entreupreuners"

2007-05-14T16:24:00.000+05:30

Finally a success story validating what I do. I am stubborn, I have conviction in my beliefs, but when you are trying to grow by raising finance you are always pushed around to alter your strategy or business plan. People tell you "build to sell", "build for compatibility", "show less cash burn", "bring in CEO", "reach profits faster", "go more aggressive", etc etc.

What is a poor startup entrepreneur to do?

Here is a story about a successful 35 year old VC who actually likes stubborn entrepreneurs, who have conviction in their beliefs. He is the one that funded Facebook and look how well they are doing:
http://www.mercurynews.com/vcsurvey/ci_5873542?nclick_check=1

Is India independent?

2007-05-08T11:51:00.000+05:30

My uncle in the US sent out a bit of trivia about the how the 1st war for independence against the colonists was lost in 1857. My reply to him was:

the war of independence in India is still lost, because India still does not appear to have a fair, fast and mature judiciary:

1. Alister ran over and killed 6 people in Bombay, the court acquitted him. Now the High Court has reopened the trial and the judge who acquitted him has resigned

2. Some of MF Hussain's (India's leading artist) paintings were complained of to a small court in Haradwar, which already had 13,000+ cases pending before it, some over 15 years old; and the court issues summons to attach MF Hussain's properties, and now MF Hussain lives in exile in Dubai

3. Richard Gere does volunteer work for an AIDS show in UP; and someone complains to a local court that he behaved obscenely on stage and the court immediately issues an arrest warrant in his name.

So what independence are we talking about. Just removing the Brits is not independence; independence is being able to secure your freedom through law, order & justice.

Why does all this happen in India? Well, the salary of a high court judge is $450 a month, and they politicians want to keep the judiciary weak so that they have power.

And who votes these politicians in? NOT US, the rich in India do not go to vote, you cannot expect them to leave their AC rooms and stand in line...so the poor go and vote, the illiterate go and vote...so you are seeing an India of the illiterates, by the illiterates and for the illiterates.

In the recent municipal election of Delhi, out of 1300+ candidates, 850+ had not graduated past class 4; and over 1100 had been booked for a criminal offense. Don't even ask me what is going on in the UP election...

Why is the dollar falling?

2007-04-30T02:45:00.000+05:30

I can't believe that the US Dollar is now Rs. 39.90... just a few years back it was Rupees 50 and then it stayed in the Rs. 44 - Rs. 47 range...

So why is the Dollar falling so sharply against the Euro, Pound, Rupee et al? Methinks its because Iran has been steadily selling oil in Euros; so many countries now need to hold less of the Dollar. Will this continue? it sure looks like it...

So what is the correct price of the Dollar? I think the Dollar still my fall another 12% - 14% in the next 12 months. After that it will stabilize as it will be at its correct level. Ofcourse many factors could derail this prediction, such as increased US exports due to weak Dollar, or Iran takeover Iraq style. But I think all this won't happen in the next 12 - 18 months, so here is to a cheaper holiday for us Indians to the US, Dubai (Duabi's Dhiram is linked to the US Dollar) and many other places.

LTTE air attacks in Sri Lanka

2007-04-30T02:31:00.000+05:30

While Sri Lanka were playing the final against Australia, Colombo plunged into darkness as the LTTE attacked from the air. This being the 3rd air attack by the LTTE in a month.

The result was that Colombo plunged into darkness and chaos. Emirates Airlines & Cathay Pacific immediately suspended operations.

This is the 1st time aircraft are being used by any liberation organisation anywhere in the world. Its a huge step and creates a lot of questions. There is an article here in the Outlook that asks these questions and makes an interesting read.

Great News: Computer population to double in 7 yrs

2007-04-20T15:05:00.000+05:30

He was the original one with the vision of a "computer on every desk in every home", and now in his closing hours at Microsoft he's taking that vision one step ahead by rolling out ultra low cost operating systems worldwide and aiming to double the world computer users population to 2 billion users in 2015 from the current 1 billion users. Read about it here: http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4032594a28.ht ml

This is indeed great news for the world, because with MS they will make a big push towards educating schools and governments around the world to adopt computers. Simultaneously Linux is on a roll and that big push is happening these as well.

"But Linux is Free" I hear you say, so what's so great about low cost Windows & Office? The great thing about MS as compared to Linux is that they support many more languages, so they will get regional usership down to the villages.

Anyway, regardless of Windows or Linux, I am confident that we will now indeed double worldwide computing.

Building a lawless India

2007-04-17T13:07:00.000+05:30

Everyone already knows that the Indian judicial systems is weak and any prosecution or dispute resolution takes forever. This pathetic state of affairs often causes people to take the law into their own hands and leads to lawlessness.

Now instead of strengthening the judicial process, the politicians are doing their best to dismantle it. Last week the Prime Minister came out against the judiciary and warned them about interfering with the political process. Just yesterday political parties broke into the offices of newspapers and tv channels and thrashed them...why? Why not respect the law? If you have a grievance with someone, take it up in court. Political parties are bypassing the law by taking the law into their own hand and keeping the judiciary weak by starving it of funds.

Is this anyway to build a safe and secure India? No it is not. Law and civil resolution is the foundation of civilised society... they were created so that instead of beating up and shooting each other, one goes to a court and gets relief.

Comeon politicians, strengthen the judiciary.

Have guns will shoot

2007-04-17T11:55:00.000+05:30

Another day, another campus shooting in the US...when will those guys learn? Just last week there is a story in the Indian press about an army corporal shooting his superior. The Indian army has a higher incidence of people shooting colleagues that the civilian population, going to show that it is the availability of guns that leads to these severe crimes.

But the gun control battle rages on in the US....I am really surprised how a society of highly educated people can debate on this. Ban guns without license NOW.

Stunning Rajasthan

2007-04-09T22:39:00.000+05:30

Beautiful Himachal

2007-04-05T10:27:00.000+05:30

Importance of end to end quality tracking

2007-03-18T17:11:00.000+05:30

Vir Shanghvi today moans about the bad quality of wine across India. Apparently this is because wines are poorly transported thus exposing them to temperature fluctuations; and because they are stored straight up (he says wines need to be stored flat inorder to be in contact with the cork and them preventing some sort of chemical reaction that makes them go bad).

I say its the fault of the wine brands who have not set up quality tracking processes that identify bad quality and the reasons behind it. It is the responsibility of every brand to ensure customer satisfaction....and if they don't do this, then a smart business can step in, map out the pain points, improve quality and steal business from the existing suppliers.

It is the responsibility of the manager of every function to put in place an end to end quality checking process, which includes reports, checks and feedback, and then strive to improve delivery/production. The best managers do this, and when all the managers in a business do this, those business become the best in their league.

Region gets increasingly unstable

2007-03-18T15:21:00.000+05:30

Tigers in Sri Lanka, civil uprising in Pakistan and Maoist rebels in Nepal; India is surrounded by extremely unstable neighbors. These countries received their independence at the same time as India, but democracy has been uprooted each time it tried. How many more deaths will it take for the people their to learn that democracy is the ONLY path to peace?

The Pakistani suppression of the Judiciary. Last week President Musharraf dismissed the Head Supreme Count Justice, who refused to step down. When the law fraternity took up his cause, President Musharraf had them brutally suppressed. Many died and many more were injured. Now Pakistan appears to be on the bring of an uprising. What is going on? When are we going to see the end of dictators in Pakistan?

Sri Lanka is a total tragedy, a nice gentle people, held hostage by a small group of so called Tamil liberationists, who are using intense violence to gain their freedom. Why is violence required? Does Sri Lanka not have a democracy? Is their judicial system dead?

And this strife threatens to spill over into India. Did you know, India deploys over 350,000 troops in Kashmir to maintain stability? That other parts of India like Assam & Chattisgarh are facing constant militancy?

So why do people take to militancy? The logical answer is because they are unable to get justice or have their voice heard, so as a last resort their take to militancy. But India is a functioning democracy and has a judiciary (albeit slow), so why is this happening? My reasoning: It is because a few greedy people want to profit from the supply of arms, so they stir up violence and create causes that raise funds, so they can earn their 20% commission in the supply of arms. Or its because governments in their misguided power plays continually try and destabilise neighbours in the hope of I don't know what. Does India want to swallow Pakistan, Sri Lanka & Nepal? Looks like it, because it looks like they have been fingering these countries by assisting rebels. However, Pakistan's case is different because their democracy has been usurped by one dictator after another.

India too must strengthen itself by improving the judicial system to enable speedy dispute redress; without this people will take the law into their own hands. It must also continue to encourage more people to vote thus encouraging an active democracy. Last but not least, education helps improve people's knowledge of their rights and grievance redressal mechanisms.

Internet Explorer IS unsecure

2007-03-04T18:33:00.000+05:30

I never believed it, I always thought it was hype...after all who do you really know that got virus infected by surfing the web. Virus' are supposed to come from spam emails, and from files that friends send, or through the office lan network; not by surfing the web.

But it happened today. I was surfing a website using IE (because I was doing some speed comparisons with Firefox) and suddenly my McAfee pops up saying there is a virus and its been deleted ! I was confused because I don't use Outlook email anymore, only Gmail and this is a NEW computer. I checked the path and it was a virus that had come through IE. The Virus had triggered when I had clicked on a link on the website; sure enough IE reported that it could not open that file or some error like that.

Years back I took the decision to shift my website from Microsoft Server to Linux and have been virus free ever since...now I'm going to stick to Firefox and avoid IE.

Alexa's dubious rankings

2007-03-04T18:08:00.000+05:30

After 7 years in the business I would have thought Alexa would have figured out how to improve the accuracy of their rankings systems. Below is hard cold proof that Alexa's system needs some serious fixing.

Flora2000's traffic and sales for Valentine's day were more than double in 2007 and compared to 2006. But broken Alexa 2007 shows lower traffic than 2006. Take a look and decide for yourself.

Agreed that Alexa is limited by the number of installs of it's toolbar. But shouldn't they have overcome this by making deals with other toolbars like Google, Yahoo, etc to expand their base and thus accuracy?

Feb 07 in pictures

2007-02-26T03:33:00.000+05:30

Here are random pictures from my life in Feb 07. Yes, obviously nothing better to post...

And the winner is: Indian Express

2007-02-18T19:42:00.000+05:30

After Hindustan Times & DNA launched with huge budgets and much fanfare, I bet my friend that in 2 years HT would be the leading broadsheet from among the two. Well the story now is that none of them are in the lead and both seem to be flagging in content.

The surprising march ahead, atleast in content, has been by the Indian Express. Long written off as a poor second contender to Times of India, and considered by many to be a nice paper focusing on pessimistic news "Journalism of Courage", off late I have been happy to notice that the quality of content has improved to a New York Times level.

Today's (Sunday) edition is miles ahead of TOI, HT and DNA, covering indepth issues nationwide and worldwide, while the other three just seem to repeat the week's news in their "India Shining" narrative style.

IE definitely needs a new coat of paint, its antiquated layout and style hide the magnificent journalism lying underneath. Though its not much of a makeover and one done quite easily.

But is India ready for this quality of journalism? Probably not. India is still masala news country. Bombay & Delhi do not have even 1 cinema house showing Independent films, where, even cities like Columbus Ohio have one. And what about blogging, Indian bloggers are a rare lot, hardly anyone blogs here, or even reads blogs, showing the dismal state of reading & writing in the country.

But the day of Indian Express will come, not now, not in 10 years, but maybe in 50 or 60 years, but it will come. The good news is that we are headed in that direction, while in many parts of the world there is no hope even of that.

Wikipedia continues to remain at the mercy of donations

2007-02-12T02:04:00.001+05:30

"Meanwhile, a Wikimedia staff member named Sandy Ordonez has posted a comment on Nick’s post saying “Ms. Devouard’s comment was taken out of context” and that “Wikipedia will not be closing any time soon. Ms. Devouard was simply referring to the ongoing, pressing needs for funds that Wikipedia, like most nonprofit organizations, face."

It really is shocking that a globally important project like Wikipedia will not take support from commercial revenue such as displaying Google text ads on the side. Look at Craig's list, they have taken limited support from commercial revenue and it keeps them out of danger of shutting down.

Bombay's new dakdak service

2007-02-06T00:10:00.000+05:30

You read it here 1st, Bombay's has launched a new inner city low cost dakdak (helicopter) service, that can take a 3 people anywhere for a low cost. It runs by meter and gets you across town in minutes.

Well.... that's actually an art installation at the annual Kala Ghoda arts fair.

The dance bar effect

2007-02-05T01:43:00.000+05:30

One and a half years ago the Congress & NCP party ruling the state of Maharashtra (of which Bombay is a part), closed 3,500 dance bars, making over 500,000 people jobless. They took the moral high ground that Dance Bars corrupted people and heartlessly destroyed the lives of half a million families. It was a sham, a politically motivated untruth meant to weaken their political opponents, whom they believed received much of their funding from Dance Bars

When this happened, it was the darkest days of my life. I could not believe that such a crime could occur in Independent India. I could not believe that a functioning democracy could do something like this.

But last week, my belief in the Indian democracy has been restored. In the recently concluded Bombay municipal elections, the people, realizing the injustice of this Congress - NCP government gave them a huge thumbs down, vanquishing them and electing their opponents.

The victory for the Shiv Sena BJP came despite the fact that they have performed poorly in providing and maintaining civic infrastructure and they tend to play communal politics. But the people of Bombay realising the huge crime of the Congress NCP went for the lesser devil.

It is this Democracy that makes India the "superpower" that it is. Not an economic or a military superpower, but a superpower of individual right and voice.

Ahmedabad

2007-01-20T21:50:00.000+05:30

I wasn't looking forward to Ahmedabad. I expected it to be another crowded, dilapitated and conjested city with chaotic traffic and blaring horns. Just like all the other nice quaint towns that have now grown into big bad ugly cities.

So it came as a plesant surprise to find Ahmedabad with a quaint and rustic air. Reminded me of Delhi in the 70s, large open roads, bearable traffic and a lack of materialism. Ah lack of material, what a relief that provides in today's world...

I was charmed by the camed drawn carts, which I had never seem earlier. And by the colourfully decorated motorcycle 3 wheelers like the one here.

Put Ahmedabad on your list.

Bombay Islands

2007-01-20T21:42:00.000+05:30

Here is a picture I stole a shot of at a recent exhibition. It shows Bombay as it was naturally, a group of 7 islands. The islands where initially linked by causeways and then later totally filled in to create the Bombay peninsula

Marketing vs Customer Experience

2007-01-06T13:47:00.000+05:30

Marketing is and has been for decades the poster child of enterprise. The subject is full of books, gurus, courses, awards, media coverage and what have you. Every CEO talks of marketing marketing marketing...and in MBA programs the lure of marketing draws millions of aspirants every year.

Then there is Customer Experience...what is that you ask? Customer Experience is the experience you have after you have fallen for the marketing and decided the buy the product. For example, after you have seen the Incredible India ads you decide to visit India; or after you received the free Yahoo T-Shirt you went and checked out the website. You'll be hard pressed to find a single book, course, expert or media coverage on this subject. It not considered important or glam.

Because Customer Experience has been neglected as a subject, it sucks in 9 out of 10 cases. You see the Incredible India ads and then you land in India where they screen all your bags upon arrival while making you wait in a 1 hr line. Or its the lousy experience you get after signing up for MSN Hotmail...

When Customer Experience is good, there have been amazing successes. Tourism into Dubai or Thailand, both which provide excellent Customer Experience has boomed. Receently Skype, Google & YouTube hit the jackpot because customers gave them 2 thumbs up and told all near and dear. The stories of good Customer Experience are many and we all know them.

Infact, I could go so far as saying, that every product with good customer experience has done well with or without help from marketing. More so in recent times where word of mouth through email, messenger, cell phone etc happens faster than ever.

So why is Customer Experience such a neglected subject? I have no idea. If it was upto me, I would do everything I could to further and better Customer Experience. I would design courses that teach the values of Customer Experience and in business reconfigure resource allocation 8:2 in favour of Customer Experience.

Till that happens, here is to more trash Marketing and even trashier Customer Experience.

India Internet Growth

2006-12-23T01:11:00.000+05:30

Here is a study by IMRB on the Internet growth. To most of us heading Internet businesses this seems an accurate picture. Unfortunately the story shows that growth is linear and not exponential like we would have hoped. But I am not sure that it will be linear, I think some compuding is bound to kick in....

Juice van

2006-12-16T15:11:00.000+05:30

Here is an enterprising guy in Bombay outside Liberty Cinema. He has parked his van in the driveway of a building and serves juice out of the back

Phones going upmarket in India

2006-12-16T14:52:00.000+05:30

India has been a notoriously low end market for cell phones, but all that seems to be changing now. More & more guys in my office are roaming around with high end phones (head of tech ofcourse has a Blackberry). Now I see ads all over the place for high end phones. Here are the 1st three pages of this week's business India.

So is the market changing? Yep. Not only can people now afford more pricey phones, but phone themselves are packing in more at a lower cost (I saw a Rs. 2800 camera phone).

What about Internert on the phone? Never say never. So far its mainly email, but I am sure both phone maufacturers and website owners will soon figure out how to get sites working through the slow speeds and the small screen of the phone...I for one would love to see yo4ya and flora2000 on the phone...need to investigate a bit more...

Help my house has been invaded

2006-12-16T14:40:00.000+05:30

My house is no longer my house, it's been taken over bymonster....

My house is no longer my house, it's been taken over by 1ft. monster....

Why Microsoft has lost the plot....

2006-12-16T01:36:00.000+05:30

Any mail sent from Yo4Ya goes to junk in Hotmail. It's fine in Yahoo, Gmail, etc. But no matter what we do it goes to junk in Hotmail. We have complained to Hotmail customer service, who bounced us to Symantech. Symantech responded after 3 weeks and said all is fine... it still goes to junk. So I spoke to y friend who is a big shot in MSN India..."can't do anything for you, but wait 8 months and we are going to kick Google's ass".......!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This personifies everything wrong with MS...they don't know the ABC of what they are doing on the web and they talk big...they are unable to fix day to day issues and they talk big....

A second opinion

2006-12-12T16:13:00.000+05:30

There is a strange conference going on in Iran. Its a conference whose aim is to give the world second opinion on the Holucast. What is strange that this conference is going on in Iran whose govt is obsessed with supressing information and speech.

The other strange thing is that it is being attened by a whole lot of Jewish Rabbis who live in Israel as Palestenians and do not pay Israrel taxes !

Read more here:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3338873,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1970042,00.html

Gmail - Site of the week 50 '07

2006-12-12T00:01:00.000+05:30

SPAM the new muti headed hydra that refuses to die....can be fought most effectively through Gmail !!!!!!!!!

Ok so you knew that Gmail was cool with its 3GB storage, speed and all that. But did you know that Gmail is super effective in fighting spam. Almost no spam gets through its spam filter and it all lets all the legitimate messages through...

For the purpose of fighting spam alone Gmail is worth it. That is why it is my site of the week this week.

Here is a neat trick: forward your corporate email account to Gmail. Gmail will clean out the spam. Then use Gmail POP3 to downloand your emails. You will be free of a lot of the usual spammy stuff. Use your corporate SMTP to send emails.

Losing the SPAM war

2006-12-10T02:07:00.000+05:30

Is it just me, or has the quantum of spam in the last 15 days gone up. I always received a lot of spam, but after taking reasonable care I was able to contain spam to manageable limits. Suddenly I now find myself drowning in spam. I received 296 spam messages in the last 18 hrs and only 6 genuibe emails.

I checked with a few friends and they say that spam seems to have gone crazy this last month.

Off late I have been missing emails and I also find that emails I am sending out aren't getting replied to...my business associates are saying "oh shit your mail went into my spam box"...

So what is to be done? I have absolutely no idea. I am using Spam Assasin, Outlook Junk filtering and Bit Defender Anti-Spam, all at the same time and the spam is getting through all of those.

Today Google announced that they are allowing Pop3 access via GMAIL. Great, good news, lets hope that I can switch from Outlook to Gmail and Gmail will contain my spam.

"Vijay's" calendar

2006-12-05T13:07:00.000+05:30

Saturday night the buzz was all about going for "Vijay's brunch" for his annual Kingfisher calendar, aboard his 350ft yatch. Through a random bit of luck an invite landed on my desk and my inviter was insistent that I go (yep in Bombay people other than the host can do the inviting)...

...the yatch looked awesome...too bad I couldn't get on board as it takes only 120 people and 800 were invited...anyway, here are the pics

You know Bollywood has arrived....

2006-11-28T21:34:00.000+05:30

...when news of Indian movie star Sanjay Dutt convicted of arms possession makes it to the no. 1 spot on Google News ahead of The Pope, Bush, Iraq, Thanksgiving Sales, Pamela Kid break up...

The strange Indian entreupreuner

2006-11-27T23:54:00.000+05:30

A groan escaped my lips yesterday as I read about this guy called Kishore Biyani and how he was adding a chain of hotels to his portfolio of an existing 100+ businesses. This guy is into everything; he has retail shops in every format (I love this meaningless MBA word), trouser stores, kids wear, Indian ethnic wear, grocery stores, discount stores, music stores, stores selling financial products, duty free shops blah blah; then he has random businesses like movie production, real estate development, health care, insurance, contract farming, beauty, gymnasiums, etc etc etc etc hahahahaha...all under the name of Future Group, a stock exchange listed company

When you goto the stores of this company, you get bland, boring and less than optimum quality products. I bought some trousers once and they were awful, though the shirts I bought weren't as bad. But when I returned another time to buy shirts, they were not carrying the same brands anymore. An epitome of Indian chaos.

One of their marketing managers interviewed with me. I asked "What is the brand positioning of your no. 1 brand Pantaloons? Why do you have a campaign that says 'Fresh Fashion' and shows sexy girls when you just mentioned it was a family store?", he answered "We are basically emulating the Zara model of getting clothes from the factory to the store fast, so we say 'Fresh Fashion'" hahahahaha. For those of you who do not know, Zara is a very successful Spanish clothes chain gone international and their brand is to bring runway fashions to the youth at budget prices, a brand position that has nothing to do with the speed of the supply chain; though Zara is renowned for its fast and optimized supply chain, but the customer dosen't care about that.

But Future Group is not alone. Every other group is similar. Tata, the famous & largest Indian business group, is again into everything, from hotels to steel to soaps and software. Bharti group, India's no. 1 cell phone provider also recently started farming (!) and retail stores !!!!!

And there is this guy I know...into everything, Internet websites, mobile downloads, franchisee shops, movies, software development, bookshops and now into compute hardware. He recently raised some cash from VCs...the merchant banker who worked on his project described him as the "finest entrepreneur he ever met"

Ok all this fine. Or appears fine.

But tell me something, please tell me, where is the talent in all this? Is entrepreneurship only about recruiting people, managing capital, undertaking strategic tie-ups and working the legislative environment? I thought entrepreneurship was about innovation, passion, product...

In these Indian entrepreneurs I see size, but I see no innovation...I see nothing of the entrepreneur in the product...in Microsoft I see Bill Gates, in Sony I see Akio Morita, in Skype I see Janus & Niklas, in Oberoi Hotels I see M.S. Oberoi...when I say I see, I mean I see the difference they made to the product, the service, the execution, the company culture...

Maybe the group system worked in non consumer categories like steel, petrochemicals; or it worked in protected and closed India. But will it work today & tomorrow? Are there any Indian electronic brands left? The Indian electronics industry was opened up 7 years back. What happened to BPL, Godrej, Onida, Videocon? Two are bankrupt & extinct and the other two have become discount brands...

So will Indian entrepreneurs survive? What will happen once the Indian economy opens and the real enterprises with domain specialty come in? What happens to Kishore Biyani when Zara comes? What happens to my friend when seed money becomes available in India and real Indian Internet entrepreneurs arrive?

Can companies and new products be built by management students? By smart capital allocation? By non specialty?

Can there be enterprise without entrepreneurs?

Maybe they can in India. When VCs can't spot the difference between innovation talent and capital allocation talent, is when they back the guys who give this diversified vision...so my diversified entrepreneurs, make hay while the sun shines...

Shoutcast - cool site 47 '06

2006-11-23T22:46:00.000+05:30

Think of a song, any song, then goto www.Shoutcast.com and search for it, in minutes you will find an Internet radio station that is playing that song...just click Tune In and instantly you will be able to hear the song through your computer !!!!

Or, having a party, want the latest music from Ibiza, the very latest DJ sets, want to hear them live and ad free? Its all on Shoutcast... unbelievable but true, Shoutcast is one of the lesser known jewels of the Internet.

To make it all work, you'll 1st have to download the music player from www.winamp.com ... the best music player for Windows...get a great soundcard and hook up your music system...leave your friends wondering how you have the coolest music in town :)

Prithvi Festival

2006-11-16T11:38:00.000+05:30

Those of you from Bombay know all about Prithvi; for others; Prithivi is a famous and innovative theatre in Juhu thats best know for its great plays and even better coffee (yep everything in India is judged on food & drink).

Every year Prithivi organises a 7 - 10 day festival featuring some cool acts. This year they've done one better and organised all around the city. I went for a Hindi-Marathi play at Horniman Circle on the life of mill workers post the mill shut down...outstanding...

Fabmall - Cool Site 46 '06

2006-11-13T02:30:00.000+05:30

Fabmall.com is this week's cool site. Its a kind of a mall which in typical Indian style tries to sell everything. And in typical Indian style, has a really badly designed GUI.

Great for books & CDs

I use Fabmall to buy books, music & DVDs. You get them at Indian prices which is a fraction of the price elsewhere. What I usually do is locate and research the book/CD/DVD on Amazon and then buy it on Fabmall. They ship it within a day or two and it arrives in good condition by overnight courier.

Be careful, the books/CDs/DVDs which show greater than 3 day shipping are NOT made in India and are imported from overseas. You are better ordering those from Amazon as you'll get them faster and cheaper.

Yo4Ya on its way

2006-11-13T02:16:00.001+05:30

Yes folks, not only has it launched, but it's in Orbit :) Here's what my home page looks like